FOUR 
AMERICAN  LEADERS 


FOUR 
AMERICAN  LEADERS 


BY 


CHARLES   W.^ELIOT 


IN-LUCE- 
VERITATIS 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN   UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 
1906 


COPYRIGHT,  1906 
AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 


GIFT 


£36 


Note 

THE  four  essays  in  this  volume  were 
written  for  celebrations  or  commemora 
tions  in  which  several  persons  took  part. 
Each  of  them  is,  therefore,  only  a  partial 
presentation  of  the  life  and  character  of 
its  subject.  The  delineation  in  every  case 
is  not  comprehensive  and  proportionate, 
but  rather  portrays  the  man  in  some  of 
his  aspects  and  qualities. 


177 


Contents 


I.     FRANKLIN 


An  address  delivered  before  the  meeting 
of  the  American  Philosophical  Society  to 
commemorate  the  two  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  birth  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Philadel 
phia,  April  20,  1906. 

II.     WASHINGTON 31 

An  address  given  before  the  Union  League 
Club  of  Chicago  at  the  exercises  in  commem 
oration  of  the  birth  of  Washington,  February 
23,  1903. 

III.  CHANNING 57 

An  address  made  at  the  unveiling  of  the 
Channing  statue  on  the  occasion  of  the  one 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  William 
Ellery  Channing,  Boston,  June  1,  1903. 

IV.  EMERSON 73 

An  address  delivered  on  the  commemo 
ration  of  the  centenary  of  the  birth  of  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  Boston,  May  24,  1903. 


FRANKLIN 


Four  American  Leaders 

FRANKLIN 

THE  facts  about  Franklin  as  a  printer 
are  simple  and  plain,  but  impressive. 
His  father,  respecting  the  boy's  strong 
disinclination  to  become  a  tallow-chandler, 
selected  the  printer's  trade  for  him,  after 
giving  him  opportunities  to  see  members 
of  several  different  trades  at  their  work, 
and  considering  the  boy's  own  tastes  and 
aptitudes.  It  was  at  twelve  years  of  age 
that  Franklin  signed  indentures  as  an  ap 
prentice  to  his  older  brother  James,  who 
was  already  an  established  printer.  By 
the  time  he  was  seventeen  years  old  he 
had  mastered  the  trade  in  all  its  branches 
so  completely  that  he  could  venture,  with 
hardly  any  money  in  his  pocket,  first  into 


4     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

New  York  and  then  into  Philadelphia 
without  a  friend  or  acquaintance  in  either 
place,  and  yet  succeed  promptly  in  earn 
ing  his  living.  He  knew  all  departments 
of  the  business.  He  was  a  pressman  as 
well  as  a  compositor.  He  understood 
both  newspaper  and  book  work.  There 
werev  at  that  time  no  such  sharp  subdi 
visions  of  labor  and,  no  such  elaborate 
machinery  as  exist  in  the  trade  to-day  ; 
and  Franklin  could  do  with  his  own  eyes 
and  hands,  long  before  he  was  of  age, 
everything  which  the  printer's  art  was 
then  equal  to.  When  the  faithless  Gov 
ernor  Keith  caused  Franklin  to  land  in 
London  without  any  resources  whatever 
except  his  skill  at  his  trade,  the  youth  was 
fully  capable  of  supporting  himself  in  the 
great  city  as  a  printer.  Franklin  had 
been  induced  by  the  governor  to  go  to 
England,  where  he  was  to  buy  a  complete 


FRANKLIN  5 

outfit  for  a  good  printing  office  to  be  set 
up  in  Philadelphia.     He  had  already  pre 
sented  the  governor  with  an  inventory  of 
the  materials  needed  in  a  small  printing 
office,  and  was  competent  to  make  a  criti 
cal  selection  of  all  these  materials  ;  yet 
when  he  arrived  in  London  on  this  errand 
he  was  only  eighteen  years  old.     Thrown 
completely  on  his  own  resources  in  the 
great  city,  he  immediately  got  work  at  a 
famous  printing   house   in   Bartholomew 
Close,  but    soon  moved  to  a  still  larger 
printing  house,  in  which  he  remained  dur 
ing  the  rest  of  his  stay  in  London.     Here 
he  worked  as  a  pressman  at  first,  but  was 
soon  transferred  to  the  composing  room, 
evidently  excelling  his  comrades  in  both 
branches   of    the    art.      The    customary 
drink  money  was  demanded  of  him,  first 
by  the  pressmen  with  whom  he  was  asso 
ciated,  and  afterwards  by  the  compositors. 


6    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

Franklin  undertook  to  resist  the  second 
demand  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  learn  that 
after  a  resistance  of  three  weeks  he  was 
forced  to  yield  to  the  demands  of  the  men 
by  just  such  measures  as  are  now  used 
against  any  scab  in  a  unionized  printing 
office.  He  says  in  his  autobiography : 
"  I  had  so  many  little  pieces  of  private 
mischief  done  me  by  mixing  my  sorts, 
transposing  my  pages,  breaking  my  matter, 
and  so  forth,  if  I  were  ever  so  little  out  of 
the  room  .  .  .  that,  notwithstanding  the 
master's  protection,  I  found  myself  obliged 
to  comply  and  pay  the  money,  convinced 
of  the  folly  of  being  on  ill  terms  with 
those  one  is  to  live  with  continually." 
He  was  stronger  than  any  of  his  mates, 
kept  his  head  clearer  because  he  did  not 
fuddle  it  with  beer,  and  availed  himself  of 
the  liberty  which  then  existed  of  working 
as  fast  and  as  much  as  he  chose.  On  this 


FRANKLIN  7 

point  he  says  :  "  My  constant  attendance 
(I  never  making  a  St.  Monday)  recom 
mended  me  to  the  master;  and  my 
uncommon  quickness  at  composing  occa 
sioned  my  being  put  upon  all  work  of 
dispatch,  which  was  generally  better  paid. 
So  I  went  on  now  very  agreeably." 

On  his  return  to  Philadelphia  Franklin 
obtained  for  a  few  months  another  occu 
pation  than  that  of  printer;  but  this 
employment  failing  through  the  death  of 
his  employer,  Franklin  returned  to  print 
ing,  becoming  the  manager  of  a  small 
printing  office,  in  which  he  was  the  only 
skilled  workman  and  was  expected  to 
teach  several  green  hands.  At  that  time 
he  was  only  twenty-one  years  of  age. 
This  printing  office  often  wanted  sorts, 
and  there  was  no  type-foundry  in  America. 
Franklin  succeeded  in  contriving  a  mould, 
struck  the  matrices  in  lead,  and  thus  sup- 


8    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

plied  the  deficiencies  of  the  office.  The 
autobiography  says :  "I  also  engraved 
several  things  on  occasion  ;  I  made  the 
ink ;  I  was  warehouse  man  and  every 
thing,  and  in  short  quite  a  factotum." 
Nevertheless,  he  was  dismissed  before  long 
by  his  incompetent  employer,  who,  how 
ever,  was  glad  to  re-engage  him  a  few 
days  later  on  obtaining  a  job  to  print 
some  paper  money  for  New  Jersey. 
Thereupon  Franklin  contrived  a  copper 
plate  press  for  this  job — the  first  that 
had  been  seen  in  the  country  —  and  cut 
the  ornaments  for  the  bills.  Meantime 
Franklin,  with  one  of  the  apprentices, 
had  ordered  a  press  and  types  from  Lon 
don,  that  they  two  might  set  up  an  inde 
pendent  office.  Shortly  after  the  New 
Jersey  job  was  finished,  these  materials 
arrived  in  Philadelphia,  and  Franklin 
immediately  opened  his  own  printing 


FRANKLIN  9 

office.  His  partner  "  was,  however,  no 
compositor,  a  poor  pressman,  and  seldom 
sober."  The  office  prospered,  and  in  July, 
1730,  when  Franklin  was  twenty-four 
years  old,  the  partnership  was  dissolved, 
and  Franklin  was  at  the  head  of  a  well- 
established  and  profitable  printing  busi 
ness.  This  business  was  the  foundation 
of  Franklin's  fortune  ;  and  better  founda 
tion  no  man  could  desire.  His  industry 
was  extraordinary.  Contrary  to  the  cur 
rent  opinion,  Dr.  Baird  of  St.  Andrews 
testified  that  the  new  printing  office  would 
succeed,  "  for  the  industry  of  that  Frank 
lin,"  he  said,  "  is  superior  to  anything  I 
ever  saw  of  the  kind  ;  I  see  him  still  at 
work  when  I  go  home  from  the  club,  and 
he  is  at  work  again  before  the  neighbors 
are  out  of  bed."  No  trade  rules  or 
customs  limited  or  levied  toll  on  his 
productiveness.  He  speedily  became  by 


10  FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

far  the  most  successful  printer  in  all  the 
colonies,  and  in  twenty  years  was  able 
to  retire  from  active  business  with  a 
competency. 

One  would,  however,  get  a  wrong  im 
pression  of  Franklin's  career  as  a  printer, 
if  he  failed  to  observe  that  from  his  boy 
hood  Franklin  constantly  used  his  connec 
tion  with  a  printing  office  to  facilitate  his 
remarkable  work  as  an  author,  editor, 
and  publisher.  Even  while  he  was  an 
apprentice  to  his  brother  James  he  suc 
ceeded  in  getting  issued  from  his  brother's 
press  ballads  and  newspaper  articles  of 
which  he  was  the  anonymous  author. 
When  he  had  a  press  of  his  own  he  used 
it  for  publishing  a  newspaper,  an  almanac, 
and  numerous  essays  composed  or  com 
piled  by  himself.  His  genius  as  a  writer 
supported  his  skill  and  industry  as  a 
printer 


FRANKLIN  11 

The  second  part  of  the  double  subject 
assigned  to  me  is  Franklin  as  philosopher. 
The  philosophy  he  taught  and  illustrated 
related  to  four  perennial  subjects  of  human 
interest  —  education,  natural  science,  poli 
tics,  and  morals.  I  propose  to  deal  in  that 
order  with  these  four  topics. 

Franklin's  philosophy  of  education  was 
elaborated  as  he  grew  up,  and  was  applied 
to  himself  throughout  his  life.  In  the 
first  place,  he  had  no  regular  education  of 
the  usual  sort.  (He  studied  and  read  with 
an  extraordinary  diligence  from  his  earli 
est  years  ;  but  he  studied  only  the  subjects 
which  attracted  him,  or  which  he  himself 
believed  would  be  good  for  him,  and 
throughout  life  he  pursued  only  those  in 
quiries  for  pursuing  which  he  found  within 
himself  an  adequate  motive. )  The  most 
important  element  in  his  training  was 
reading,  for  which  he  had  a  precocious 


12     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

desire  which  was  imperative,  and  proved 
to  be  lasting.  His  opportunities  to  get 
books  were  scanty ;  but  he  seized  on  all 
such  opportunities,  and  fortunately  he 
early  came  upon  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress," 
the  Spectator,  Plutarch,  Xenophon's 
"  Memorabilia,"  and  Locke  "  On  the  Hu 
man  Understanding."  Practice  of  English 
composition  was  the  next  agency  in 
Franklin's  education;  and  his  method  — 
quite  of  his  own  invention  —  was  certainly 
an  admirable  one.  He  would  make  brief 
notes  of  the  thoughts  contained  in  a  good 
piece  of  writing,  and  lay  these  notes  aside 
for  several  days  ;  then,  without  looking  at 
the  book,  he  would  endeavor  to  express 
these  thoughts  in  his  own  words  as  fully 
as  they  had  been  expressed  in  the  original 
paper.  Lastly,  he  would  compare  his 
product  with  the  original,  thus  discover 
ing  his  shortcomings  and  errors.  To  im- 


FRANKLIN  13 

prove  his  vocabulary  he  turned  specimens 
of  prose  into  verse,  and  later,  when  he 
had  forgotten  the  original,  turned  the 
verse  back  again  into  prose.  This  exer 
cise  enlarged  his  vocabulary  and  his 
acquaintance  with  synonyms  and  their 
different  shades  of  meaning,  and  showed 
him  how  he  could  twist  phrases  and  sen 
tences  about.  His  times  for  such  exer 
cises  and  for  reading  were  at  night  after 
work,  before  work  in  the  morning,  and  on 
Sundays.  This  severe  training  he  imposed 
on  himself ;  and  he  was  well  advanced  in 
it  before  he  was  sixteen  years  of  age. 
His  memory  and  his  imagination  must 
both  have  served  him  well ;  for  he  not 
only  acquired  a  style  fit  for  narrative, 
exposition,  or  argument,  but  also  learned 
to  use  the  fable,  parable,  paraphrase,  pro 
verb,  and  dialogue.  The  third  element 
in  his  education  was  writing  for  publica- 


14     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

tion ;  he  began  very  early,  while  he  was 
still  a  young  boy,  to  put  all  he  had  learned 
to  use  in  writing  for  the  press.  When  he 
was  but  nineteen  years  old  he  wrote  and 
published  in  London  "  A  Dissertation 
on  Liberty  and  Necessity,  Pleasure  and 
Pain."  In  after  years  he  was  not  proud 
of  this  pamphlet ;  but  it  was,  neverthe 
less,  a  remarkable  production  for  a  youth 
of  nineteen.  So  soon  as  he  was  able  to 
establish  a  newspaper  in  Philadelphia  he 
wrote  for  it  with  great  spirit,  and  in  a 
style  at  once  accurate,  concise,  and  attrac 
tive,  making  immediate  application  of  his 
reading  and  of  the  conversation  of  intelli 
gent  acquaintances  on  both  sides  of  the 
ocean.  His  fourth  principle  of  education 
was  that  it  should  continue  through  life, 
and  should  make  use  of  the  social  in 
stincts.  (To  that  end  he  thought  that 
friends  and  acquaintances  might  fitly  band 


FRANKLIN  15 

together  in  a  systematic  endeavor  after 
mutual  improvement.^  }  The  Junto  was 
created  as  a  school  of  philosophy,  morality, 
and  politics ;  and  this  purpose  it  actually 
served  for  many  years.  Some  of  the 
questions  read  at  every  meeting  of  the 
Junto,  with  a  pause  after  each  one,  would 
be  curiously  opportune  in  such  a  society 
at  the  present  day.  For  example,  No.  5, 
"  Have  you  lately  heard  how  any  present 
rich  man,  here  or  elsewhere,  got  his 
estate  ? "  And  No.  6,  "  Do  you  know  of 
a  fellow-citizen  .  .  .  who  has  lately  com 
mitted  an  error  proper  for  us  to  be  warned 
against  and  avoid  ? "  When  a  new  mem 
ber  was  initiated  he  was  asked,  among 
other  questions,  the  following :  "  Do  you 
think  any  person  ought  to  be  harmed  in 
his  body,  name,  or  goods,  for  mere  specu 
lative  opinions  or  his  external  way  of 
worship  ? "  and  again,  "  Do  you  love  truth 


16    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

for  truth's  sake,  and  will  you  endeavor 
impartially  to  find  it,  receive  it  yourself, 
and  communicate  it  to  others  ? "  The 
Junto  helped  to  educate  Franklin,  and  he 
helped  greatly  to  train  all  its  members. 

The  nature  of  Franklin's  own  education 
accounts  for  many  of  his  opinions  on  the 
general  subject.  Thus,  he  believed,  con 
trary  to  the  judgment  of  his  time,  that 
Latin  and  Greek  were  not  essential  sub 
jects  in  a  liberal  education,  and  that 
mathematics,  in  which  he  never  excelled, 
did  not  deserve  the  place  it  held.  He 
believed  that  any  one  who  had  acquired  a 
command  of  good  English  could  learn 
any  other  modern  language  that  he  really 
needed  when  he  needed  it ;  and  this  faith 
he  illustrated  in  his  own  person,  for  he 
learned  French,  when  he  needed  it,  suffi 
ciently  well  to  enable  him  to  exercise 
great  influence  for  many  years  at  the 


FRANKLIN  17 

French  court.  As  the  fruit  of  his  educa 
tion  he  exhibited  a  clear,  pungent,  persua 
sive  English  style,  both  in  writing  and 
in  conversation — a  style  which  gave  him 
great  and  lasting  influence  among  men.  It 
is  easy  to  say  that  such  a  training  as  Frank 
lin's  is  suitable  only  for  genius.  Be  that 
as  it  may,  Franklin's  philosophy  of  educa 
tion  certainly  tells  in  favor  of  liberty  for 
the  individual  in  his  choice  of  studies,  and 
teaches  that  a  desire  for  good  reading  and 
a  capacity  to  write  well  are  two  very  im 
portant  fruits  of  any  liberal  culture.  It 
was  all  at  the  service  of  his  successor 
Jefferson,  the  founder  of  the  University 
of  Virginia. 

Franklin's  studies  in  natural  philosophy 
are  characterized  by  remarkable  direct 
ness,  patience,  and  inventiveness,  absolute 
candor  in  seeking  the  truth,  and  a  power 
ful  scientific  imagination.  What  has 


18     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

been  usually  considered  his  first  discovery 
was  the  now  familiar  fact  that  northeast 
storms  on  the  Atlantic  coast  begin  to  lee 
ward.  The  Pennsylvania  fireplace  he 
invented  was  an  ingenious  application  to 
the  warming  and  ventilating  of  an  apart 
ment  of  the  laws  that  regulate  the  move 
ment  of  hot  air.  At  the  age  of  forty-one 
he  became  interested  in  the  subject  of 
electricity,  and  with  the  aid  of  many 
friends  and  acquaintances  pursued  the 
subject  for  four  years,  with  no  thought 
about  personal  credit  for  inventing  either 
theories  or  processes,  but  simply  with 
delight  in  experimentation  and  in  efforts 
to  explain  the  phenomena  he  observed. 
His  kite  experiment  to  prove  lightning 
to  be  an  electrical  phenomenon  very  pos 
sibly  did  not  really  draw  lightning  from 
the  cloud  ;  but  it  supplied  evidence  of 
electrical  energy  in  the  atmosphere  which 


FRANKLIN  19 

went  far  to  prove  that  lightning  was  an 
electrical  discharge.  The  sagacity  of 
Franklin's  scientific  inquiries  is  well  illus 
trated  by  his  notes  on  colds  and  their 
causes.  He  maintains  that  influenzas 
usually  classed  as  colds  do  not  arise,  as  a 
rule,  from  either  cold  or  dampness.  He 
points  out  that  savages  and  sailors,  who 
are  often  wet,  do  not  catch  cold,  and  that 
the  disease  called  a  cold  is  not  taken  by 
swimming.  He  maintains  that  people 
who  live  in  the  forest,  in  open  barns,  or 
with  open  windows,  do  not  catch  cold, 
and  that  the  disease  called  a  cold  is  gener 
ally  caused  by  impure  air,  lack  of  exercise, 
or  overeating.  He  comes  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  influenzas  and  colds  are  conta 
gious  —  a  doctrine  which,  a  century  and  a 
half  later,  was  proved,  through  the  advance 
of  bacteriological  science,  to  be  sound. 
The  following  sentence  exhibits  remark- 


20     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

able  insight,  considering  the  state  of 
medical  art  at  that  time  :  "I  have  long 
been  satisfied  from  observation,  that 
besides  the  general  colds  now  termed 
influenzas  (which  may  possibly  spread 
by  contagion,  as  well  as  by  a  particular 
quality  of  the  air),  people  often  catch  cold 
from  one  another  when  shut  up  together 
in  close  rooms  and  coaches,  and  when 
sitting  near  and  conversing  so  as  to 
breathe  in  each  other's  transpiration ; 
the  disorder  being  in  a  certain  state."  In 
the  light  of  present  knowledge  what  a 
cautious  and  exact  statement  is  that ! 

There  being  no  learned  society  in  all 
America  at  the  time,  Franklin's  scientific 
experiments  were  almost  all  recorded  in 
letters  written  to  interested  friends ;  and 
he  was  never  in  any  haste  to  write  these 
letters.  He  never  took  a  patent  on  any 
of  his  inventions,  and  made  no  effort  either 


FRANKLIN  21 

to  get  a  profit  from  them,  or  to  establish 
any  sort  of  intellectual  proprietorship  in 
his  experiments  and  speculations.  One 
of  his  English  correspondents,  Mr.  Col- 
linson,  published  in  1751  a  number  of 
Franklin's  letters  to  him  in  a  pamphlet 
called  "  New  Experiments  and  Observa 
tions  in  Electricity  made  at  Philadelphia 
in  America."  This  pamphlet  was  trans 
lated  into  several  European  languages,  and 
established  over  the  continent  —  particu 
larly  in  France  —  Franklin's  reputation  as 
a  natural  philosopher.  A  great  variety 
of  phenomena  engaged  his  attention,  such 
as  phosphorescence  in  sea  water,  the  cause 
of  the  saltness  of  the  sea,  the  form  and 
the  temperatures  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  the 
effect  of  oil  in  stilling  waves,  and  the 
cause  of  smoky  chimneys.  Franklin  also 
reflected  and  wrote  on  many  topics  which 
are  now  classified  under  the  head  of  politi- 


22     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

cal  economy,  —  such  as  paper  currency, 
national  wealth,  free  trade,  the  slave  trade, 
the  effects  of  luxury  and  idleness,  and  the 
misery  and  destruction  caused  by  war. 
Not  even  his  caustic  wit  could  adequately 
convey  in  words  his  contempt  and  ab 
horrence  for  war  as  a  mode  of  settling 
questions  arising  between  nations.  He 
condensed  his  opinions  on  that  subject 
into  the  epigram :  "  There  never  was  a 
good  war  or  a  bad  peace." 

Franklin's  political  philosophy  may  all 
be  summed  up  in  seven  words  —  "  first 
freedom,  then  public  happiness  and  com 
fort."  The  spirit  of  liberty  was  born  in 
him.  He  resented  his  brother's  blows 
when  he  was  an  apprentice,  and  escaped 
from  them.  ^As  a  merejboy  he  refused  to 
attend  church  on  Sundays  in  accordance 
with  the  custom  of  his  family  and  his 
town,  and  devoted  his  Sundays  to  reading 


FRANKLIN  23 

and  study.  In  practising  his  trade  he 
claimed  and  diligently  sought  complete 
freedom.  In  public  and  private  business 
alike  he  tried  to  induce  people  to  take 
any  action  desired  of  them  by  presenting 
to  them  a  motive  they  could  understand 
and  feel  —  a  motive  which  acted  on  their 
own  wills  and  excited  their  hopes.  This 
is  the  only  method  possible  under  a 
regime  of  liberty.  A  perfect  illustration 
of  his  practice  in  this  respect  is  found  in 
his  successful  provision  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  four-horse  wagons  for  Braddock's 
force,  when  it  was  detained  on  its  march 
from  Annapolis  to  western  Pennsylvania 
by  the  lack  of  wagons.  The  military 
method  would  have  been  to  seize  horses, 
wagons,  and  drivers  wherever  found. 
Franklin  persuaded  Braddock,  instead  of 
using  force,  to  allow  him  (Franklin)  to 
offer  a  good  hire  for  horses,  wagons,  and 


24     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

drivers,  and  proper  compensation  for  the 
equipment  in  case  of  loss.  By  this  appeal 
to  the  frontier  farmers  of  Pennsylvania  he 
secured  in  two  weeks  all  the  transporta 
tion  required.  To  defend  public  order 
Franklin  was  perfectly  ready  to  use  pub 
lic  force,  as,  for  instance,  when  he  raised 
and  commanded  a  regiment  of  militia  to 
defend  the  northwestern  frontier  from  the 
Indians  after  Braddock's  defeat,  and  again, 
when  it  became  necessary  to  defend  Phil 
adelphia  from  a  large  body  of  frontiers 
men  who  had  lynched  a  considerable 
number  of  friendly  Indians,  and  were 
bent  on  revolutionizing  the  Quaker  gov 
ernment.  But  his  abhorrence  of  all  war 
was  based  on  the  facts,  first,  that  during 
war  the  law  must  be  silent,  and,  secondly, 
that  military  discipline,  which  is  essential 
for  effective  fighting,  annihilates  individ 
ual  liberty.  "Those,"  he  said,  "who 


FRANKLIN  25 

would  give  up  essential  liberty  for  the 
sake  of  a  little  temporary  safety  deserve 
neither  liberty  nor  safety."  The  founda 
tion  of  his  firm  resistance  on  behalf  of  the 
colonies  to  the  English  Parliament  was 
his  impregnable  conviction  that  the  love 
of  liberty  was  the  ruling  passion  of  the 
people  of  the  colonies.  In  1766  he  said 
of  the  American  people :  "  Every  act  of 
oppression  will  sour  their  tempers,  lessen 
greatly,  if  not  annihilate,  the  profits  of 
your  commerce  with  them,  and  hasten 
their  final  revolt ;  for  the  seeds  of  liberty 
are  universally  found  there,  and  nothing 
can  eradicate  them."  Because  they  loved 
liberty,  they  would  not  be  taxed  without 
representation ;  they  would  not  have 
soldiers  quartered  on  them,  or  their  gov 
ernors  made  independent  of  the  people  in 
regard  to  their  salaries ;  or  their  ports 
closed,  or  their  commerce  regulated  by 


26     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

Parliament.  It  is  interesting  to  observe 
how  Franklin's  experiments  and  specula 
tions  in  natural  science  often  had  a  favor 
able  influence  on  freedom  of  thought. 
His  studies  in  economics  had  a  strong 
tendency  in  that  direction.  His  views 
about  religious  toleration  were  founded 
on  his  intense  faith  in  civil  liberty ;  and 
even  his  demonstration  that  lightning 
was  an  electrical  phenomenon  brought 
deliverance  for  mankind  from  an  ancient 
terror.  It  removed  from  the  domain  of 
the  supernatural  a  manifestation  of  for 
midable  power  that  had  been  supposed  to 
be  a  weapon  of  the  arbitrary  gods ;  and 
since  it  increased  man's  power  over  nature, 
it  increased  his  freedom. 

This  faith  in  freedom  was  fully  de 
veloped  in  Franklin  long  before  the 
American  Revolution  and  the  French 
Revolution  made  the  fundamental  princi- 


FRANKLIN  27 

pies  of  liberty  familiar  to  civilized  man 
kind.  His  views  concerning  civil  liberty 
were  even  more  remarkable  for  his  time 
than  his  views  concerning  religious  lib 
erty  ;  but  they  were  not  developed  in  a 
passionate  nature  inspired  by  an  enthusi 
astic  idealism.  He  was  the  very  embodi 
ment  of  common  sense,  moderation,  and 
sober  honesty.  His  standard  of  human 
society  is  perfectly  expressed  in  the 
description  of  New  England  which  he 
wrote  in  1772 :  "  I  thought  often  of  the 
happiness  in  New  England,  where  every 
man  is  a  freeholder,  has  a  vote  in  public 
affairs,  lives  in  a  tidy,  warm  house,  has 
plenty  of  good  food  and  fuel,  with  whole 
clothes  from  head  to  foot,  the  manufac 
ture  perhaps  of  his  own  family.  Long  may 
they  continue  in  this  situation  ! "  Such  was 
Franklin's  conception  of  a  free  and  happy 
people.  Such  was  his  political  philosophy. 


28     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

The  moral  philosophy  of  Franklin  con 
sisted  almost  exclusively  in  the  inculcation 
of  certain  very  practical  and  unimagina 
tive  virtues,  such  as  temperance,  frugality, 
industry,  moderation,  cleanliness,  and 
tranquillity.  Sincerity  and  justice,  and 
resolution  —  that  indispensable  fly-wheel 
of  virtuous  habit  —  are  found  in  his  table 
of  virtues  ;  but  all  his  moral  precepts  seem 
to  be  based  on  observation  and  experience 
of  life,  and  to  express  his  convictions  con 
cerning  what  is  profitable,  prudent,  and 
on  the  whole  satisfactory  in  the  life  that 
now  is.  His  philosophy  is  a  guide  of  life, 
because  it  searches  out  virtues,  and  so 
provides  the  means  of  expelling  vices.  It 
may  reasonably  determine  conduct.  It  did 
determine  Franklin's  conduct  to  a  remark 
able  degree,  and  has  had  a  prodigious 
influence  for  good  on  his  countrymen  and 
on  civilized  mankind.  Nevertheless,  it 


FRANKLIN  29 

omits  all  consideration  of  the  prime  motive 
power,  which  must  impel  to  right  conduct, 
as  fire  supplies  the  power  which  actuates 
the  engine.  That  motive  power  is  pure, 
unselfish  love  —  love  to  God  and  love  to 
man.  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God  with  all  thy  heart  .  .  .  and  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself." 

Franklin  never  seems  to  have  perceived 
that  the  supreme  tests  of  civilization  are 
the  tender  and  honorable  treatment  of 
women  as  equals,  and  the  sanctity  of 
home  life.  There  was  one  primary  virtue 
on  his  list  which  he  did  not  always  prac 
tise.  His  failures  in  this  respect  dimin 
ished  his  influence  for  good  among  his 
contemporaries,  and  must  always  qualify 
the  admiration  with  which  mankind  will 
regard  him  as  a  moral  philosopher  and  an 
exhorter  to  a  good  life.  His  sagacity, 
intellectual  force,  versatility,  originality, 


30     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

firmness,  fortunate  period  of  service,  and 
longevity  combined  to  make  him  a  great 
leader  of  his  people.  In  American  public 
affairs  the  generation  of  wise  leaders  next 
to  his  own  felt  for  him  high  admiration 
and  respect ;  and  the  strong  republic, 
whose  birth  and  youthful  growth  he  wit 
nessed,  will  carry  down  his  fame  as  politi 
cal  philosopher,  patriot,  and  apostle  of 
liberty  through  long  generations. 


WASHINGTON 


WASHINGTON 

THE  virtues  of  Washington  were  of 
two  kinds,  the  splendid  and  the  homely  ; 
I  adopt,  for  my  part  in  this  celebration, 
some  consideration  of  Washington  as  a 
man  of  homely  virtues,  giving  our  far- 
removed  generation  a  homely  example. 

The  first  contrast  to  which  I  invite 
your  attention  is  the  contrast  between  the 
early  age  at  which  Washington  began  to 
profit  by  the  discipline  of  real  life  and  the 
late  age  at  which  our  educated  young 
men  exchange  study  under  masters,  and 
seclusion  in  institutions  of  learning,  for 
personal  adventure  and  responsibility  out 
in  the  world.  Washington  was  a  public 
surveyor  at  sixteen  years  of  age.  He 
could  not  spell  well ;  but  he  could  make 

3 


34     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

a  correct  survey,  keep  a  good  journal,  and 
endure  the  hardships  to  which  a  surveyor 
in  the  Virginia  wilderness  was  inevitably 
exposed.  Our  expectation  of  good  ser 
vice  and  hard  work  from  boys  of  sixteen, 
not  to  speak  of  young  men  of  twenty-six, 
is  very  low.  I  have  heard  it  maintained 
in  a  learned  college  faculty  that  young 
men  who  were  on  the  average  nineteen 
years  of  age,  were  not  fit  to  begin  the 
study  of  economics  or  philosophy,  even 
under  the  guidance  of  skilful  teachers,  and 
that  no  young  man  could  nowadays  begin 
the  practice  of  a  profession  to  advantage 
before  he  was  twenty-six  or  twenty-seven 
years  old.  Now,  Washington  was  at 
twenty-one  the  Governor  of  Virginia's 
messenger  to  the  French  forts  beyond  the 
Alleghanies.  He  was  already  an  accom 
plished  woodman,  an  astute  negotiator  with 
savages  and  the  French,  and  the  cautious 


WASHINGTON  35 

yet  daring  leader  of  a  company  of  raw, 
insubordinate  frontiersmen,  who  were  to 
advance  500  miles  into  a  wilderness  with 
nothing  but  an  Indian  trail  to  follow. 
In  1755,  at  twenty-three  years  of  age, 
twenty  years  before  the  Revolutionary  War 
broke  out,  he  was  a  skilful  and  experienced 
fighter,  and  a  colonel  in  the  Virginia  ser 
vice.  What  a  contrast  to  our  college 
under-graduates  of  to-day,  who  at  twenty- 
two  years  of  age  are  still  getting  their 
bodily  vigor  through  sports  and  not 
through  real  work,  and  who  seldom  seem 
to  realize  that,  just  as  soon  as  they  have 
acquired  the  use  of  the  intellectual  tools 
and  stock  with  which  a  livelihood  is  to  be 
earned  in  business  or  in  the  professions, 
the  training  of  active  life  is  immeasurably 
.better  than  the  training  of  the  schools ! 
Yet  Washington  never  showed  at  any 
iage  the  least  spark  of  genius  ;  he  was  only 


36     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

"  sober,  sensible,  honest,  and  brave,"  as  he 
said  of  Major-General  Lincoln  in  1791. 

By  inheritance  and  by  marriage  Wash 
ington  became,  while  he  was  still  young, 
one  of  the  richest  men  in  the  country  ; 
but  what  a  contrast  between  his  sort  of 
riches  and  our  sorts !  He  was  a  planter 
and  sportsman  —  a  country  gentleman. 
All  his  home  days  were  spent  in  looking 
after  his  farms ;  in  breeding  various  kinds 
of  domestic  animals  ;  in  fishing  for  profit ; 
in  attending  to  the  diseases  and  accidents 
which  befall  livestock,  including  slaves  ; 
in  erecting  buildings,  and  repairing  them  ; 
in  caring  for  or  improving  his  mills,  barns, 
farm  implements,  and  tools.  He  always 
lived  very  close  to  nature,  and  from  his 
boyhood  studied  the  weather,  the  markets, 
his  crops  and  woods,  and  the  various  qual 
ities  of  his  lands.  He  was  an  economical 
husbandman,  attending  to  all  the  details 


WASHINGTON  37 

of  the  management  of  his  large  estates. 
He  was  constantly  on  horseback,  often 
riding  fifteen  miles  on  his  daily  rounds. 
At  sixty-seven  years  of  age  he  caught 
the  cold  which  killed  him  by  getting  wet 
on  horseback,  riding  as  usual  about  his 
farms. 

Compare  this  sort  of  life,  physical  and 
mental,  with  the  life  of  the  ordinary  rich 
American  of  to-day,  who  has  made  his 
money  in  stocks  and  bonds,  or  as  a  banker, 
broker,  or  trader,  or  in  the  management 
of  great  transportation  or  industrial  con 
cerns.  This  modern  rich  man,  in  all 
probability,  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  nature  or  with  country  life.  He  is 
soft  and  tender  in  body ;  lives  in  the  city ; 
takes  no  vigorous  exercise,  and  has  very 
little  personal  contact  with  the  elemental 
forces  of  either  nature  or  mankind.  He 
is  not  like  Washington  an  out-of-door 


38     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

man.  Washington  was  a  combination  of 
land-owner,  magistrate,  and  soldier,  —  the 
best  combination  for  a  leader  of  men 
which  the  feudal  system  produced.  Our 
modern  rich  man  is  apt  to  possess  no  one 
of  these  functions,  any  one  of  which,  well 
discharged,  has  in  times  past  commanded 
the  habitual  respect  of  mankind.  It  is  a 
grave  misfortune  for  our  country,  and 
especially  for  our  rich  men,  that  the  mod 
ern  forms  of  property,  —  namely,  stocks 
and  bonds,  mortgages,  and  city  buildings 
-  do  not  carry  with  them  any  inevitable 
responsibilities  to  the  state,  or  involve 
their  owner  in  personal  risks  and  charges 
as  a  leader  or  commander  of  the  people. 
The  most  enviable  rich  man  to-day  is  the 
intelligent  industrial  or  commercial  ad 
venturer  or  promoter,  in  the  good  sense  of 
those  terms.  He  takes  risks  and  assumes 
burdens  on  a  large  scale,  and  has  a  chance 


WASHINGTON  39 

to  develop  will,  mind,  and  character,  just 
as  Queen  Elizabeth's  adventurers  did  all 
over  the  then  known  world. 

Again,  Washington,  as  I  have  already 
indicated,  was  an  economical  person,  care 
ful  about  little  expenditures  as  well  as 
great,  averse  to  borrowing  money,  and 
utterly  impatient  of  waste.  If  a  slave 
were  hopelessly  ill,  he  did  not  call  a  doc 
tor,  because  it  would  be  a  useless  expendi 
ture.  He  insisted  that  the  sewing  woman, 
Carolina,  who  had  only  made  five  shirts 
in  a  week,  not  being  sick,  should  make 
nine.  He  entered  in  his  account  "  thread 
and  needle,  one  penny,"  and  used  said 
thread  and  needle  himself.  All  this  close 
ness  and  contempt  for  shiftlessness  and 
prodigality  were  perfectly  consistent  with 
a  large  and  hospitable  way  of  living ;  for 
during  many  years  of  his  life  he  kept  open 
house  at  Mt.  Vernon.  This  frugal  and 


40     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

prudent  man  knew  exactly  what  it  meant 
to  devote  his  "  life  and  fortune  to  the 
cause  we  are  engaged  in,  if  needful,"  as 
he  wrote  in  1774.  This  was  not  an  ex 
aggerated  or  emotional  phrase.  It  was 
moderate,  but  it  meant  business.  He 
risked  his  whole  fortune.  What  he  lost 
through  his  service  in  the  Revolutionary 
War  is  clearly  stated  in  a  letter  written 
from  Mt.  Vernon  in  1784  :  "  I  made  no 
money  from  my  estate  during  the  nine 
years  I  was  absent  from  it,  and  brought 
none  home,  with  me.  Those  who  owed 
me,  for  the  most  part,  took  advantage  of 
the  depreciation,  and  paid  me  off  with  six 
pence  in  the  pound.  Those  to  whom  I 
was  indebted,  I  have  yet  to  pay,  without 
other  means,  if  they  will  wait,  than  selling 
part  of  my  estate,  or  distressing  those  who 
were  too  honest  to  take  advantage  of  the 
tender  laws  to  quit  scores  with  me." 


WASHINGTON  41 

Should  we  not  all  be  glad  if  to-day  a  hun 
dred  or  two  multi-millionaires  could  give 
such  an  account  as  that  of  their  losses  in 
curred  in  the  public  service,  even  if  they 
had  not,  like  Washington,  risked  their 
lives  as  well  ?  In  our  times  we  have 
come  to  think  that  a  rich  man  should  not 
be  frugal  or  economical,  but  rather  waste 
ful  or  extravagant.  We  have  even  been 
asked  to  believe  that  a  cheap  coat  makes 
a  cheap  man.  If  there  were  a  fixed  rela 
tion  between  a  man's  character  and  the 
price  of  his  clothes,  what  improvement 
we  should  have  seen  in  the  national  charac 
ter  since  1893  1  At  Harvard  University, 
twelve  hundred  students  take  three  meals 
a  day  in  the  great  dining-room  of  Memo 
rial  Hall,  and  manage  the  business  them 
selves  through  an  elected  President  and 
Board  of  Directors.  These  officers  pro 
scribe  stews,  apparently  because  it  is  a  form 


42     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

in  which  cheap  meat  may  be  offered  them, 
neglecting  the  more  important  fact  that 
the  stew  is  the  most  nutritious  and  digest 
ible  form  in  which  meats  can  be  eaten. 
Mr.  Edward  Atkinson,  the  economist, 
invented  an  oven  in  which  various  kinds 
of  foods  may  be  cheaply  and  well  pre 
pared  with  a  minimum  of  attention  to  the 
process.  The  workingmen,  among  whom 
he  attempted  to  introduce  it,  took  no 
interest  in  it  whatever,  because  it  was 
recommended  to  them  as  a  cheap  way  of 
preparing  inexpensive  though  excellent 
foods.  This  modern  temper  affords  a 
most  striking  contrast  to  the  practices 
and  sentiments  of  Washington,  senti 
ments  and  practices  which  underlay  his 
whole  public  life  as  well  as  his  private 
life. 

If  he  were  alive  to-day,  would  he  not 
be  bewildered  by  much  of  our  talk  about 


WASHINGTON  43 

the  rights  of  men  and  animals  ?  Wash 
ington's  mind  dwelt  very  little  on  rights 
and  very  much  on  duties.  For  him, 
patriotism  was  a  duty  ;  good  citizenship 
was  a  duty ;  and  for  the  masses  of  man 
kind  it  was  a  duty  to  clear  away  the 
forest,  till  the  ground,  and  plant  fruit 
trees,  just  as  he  prescribed  to  the  hoped- 
for  tenants  on  his  Ohio  and  Kanawha 
lands.  For  men  and  women  in  general 
he  thought  it  a  duty  to  increase  and  mul 
tiply,  and  to  make  the  wilderness  glad 
with  rustling  crops,  lowing  herds,  and 
children's  voices.  When  he  retired  from 
the  Presidency,  he  expressed  the  hope 
that  he  might  "  make  and  sell  a  little 
flour  annually."  For  the  first  soldier  and 
first  statesman  of  his  country,  surely  this 
was  a  modest  anticipation  of  continued 
usefulness.  We  think  more  about  our 
rights  than  our  duties.  He  thought  more 


44     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

about  his  duties  than  his  rights.  Pos 
terity  has  given  him  first  place  because 
of  the  way  in  which  he  conceived  and 
performed  his  duties  ;  it  will  judge  the 
leaders  of  the  present  generation  by  the 
same  standard,  whatever  their  theories 
about  human  rights. 

Having  said  thus  much  about  contrasts, 
let  me  now  turn  to  some  interesting  re 
semblances  between  Washington's  times 
and  our  own.  We  may  notice  in  the  first 
place  the  permanency  of  the  fighting 
quality  in  the  English- American  stock. 
Washington  was  all  his  life  a  fighter. 
The  entire  American  people  is  to-day  a 
fighting  people,  prone  to  resort  to  force 
and  prompt  to  take  arms,  the  different 
sections  of  the  population  differing  chiefly 
in  regard  to  the  nature  and  amount  of  the 
provocation  which  will  move  them  to  vio 
lence  and  combat.  To  this  day  nothing 


WASHINGTON  45 

moves  the  admiration  of  the  people  so 
quickly  as  composure,  ingenuity,  and  suc 
cess  in  fighting ;  so  that  even  in  political 
contests  all  the  terms  and  similes  are 
drawn  from  war,  and  among  American 
sports  the  most  popular  have  in  them  a 
large  element  of  combat.  Washington 
was  roused  and  stimulated  by  the  dangers 
of  the  battlefield,  and  utterly  despised 
cowards,  or  even  men  who  ran  away  in 
battle  from  a  momentary  terror  which 
they  did  not  habitually  manifest.  His 
early  experience  taught  him,  however, 
that  the  Indian  way  of  fighting  in  woods 
or  on  broken  ground  was  the  most  effec 
tive  way  ;  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  adopt 
and  advocate  that  despised  mode  of  fight 
ing,  which  has  now,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  later,  become  the  only  possible 
mode.  The  Indian  in  battle  took  in 
stantly  to  cover,  if  he  could  find  it.  In 


46     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

our  Civil  War  both  sides  learned  to  throw 
up  breastworks  wherever  they  expected 
an  engagement  to  take  place;  and  the 
English  in  South  Africa  have  demonstrated 
that  the  only  possible  way  to  fight  with 
the  present  long  range  quick-firing  guns, 
is  the  way  in  which  the  "treacherous 
devils,"  as  Washington  called  the  Indians, 
fought  General  Braddock,  that  is,  with 
stratagem,  surprise,  and  ambuscade ;  with 
hiding  and  crawling  behind  screens  and 
obstacles  ;  with  the  least  possible  appear 
ance  in  open  view,  with  nothing  that  can 
glitter  on  either  arms  or  clothes,  and  with 
no  visible  distinction  between  officers  and 
men.  War  is  now  a  genuinely  Indian 
performance,  just  as  Washington  saw  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  that  it  ought 
to  be. 

The  silent   Washington's  antipathy  to 
the  press  finds  an  exact  parallel  in  our  own 


WASHINGTON  47 

day.  He  called  the  writers  of  the  press 
"  infamous  scribblers."  President  Cleve 
land  called  them  "  ghouls."  But  it  must 
be  confessed  that  the  newspapers  of 
Washington's  time  surpassed  those  of  the 
present  day  in  violence  of  language,  and 
in  lack  of  prophetic  insight  and  just  ap 
preciation  of  men  and  events.  When 
Washington  retired  from  the  Presidency 
the  Aurora  said,  "  If  ever  a  Nation 
was  debauched  by  a  man,  the  Ameri 
can  Nation  has  been  debauched  by 
Washington." 

Some  of  the  weaknesses  or  errors  of  the 
Congresses  of  Washington's  time  have 
been  repeated  in  our  own  day,  and  seem 
as  natural  to  us  as  they  doubtless  seemed 
to  the  men  of  1776  and  1796.  Thus,  the 
Continental  Congress  incurred  all  the  evils 
of  a  depreciated  currency  with  the  same 
blindness  which  afflicted  the  Congress  of 


48     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

the  Southern  Confederacy  and  the  Union 
Congress  during  the  Civil  War,  or  the 
Democrat-Populist  party  of  still  more 
recent  times.  The  refusal  of  the  Con 
gress  of  1777  to  carry  out  the  agreement 
made  with  the  Hessian  prisoners  at  Sara 
toga  reminds  one  of  the  refusal  of  Con 
gress,  in  spite  of  the  public  exhortations 
of  our  present  Executive,  and  his  cabinet, 
to  carry  out  the  understanding  with  Cuba 
in  regard  to  the  commercial  relations  of 
the  island  with  the  United  States.  In 
both  cases  the  honor  of  the  country  was 
tarnished. 

The  intensity  of  party  spirit  in  Wash 
ington's  time  closely  resembles  that  of  our 
own  day,  but  was  certainly  fiercer  than  it 
is  now,  the  reason  being  that  the  ques 
tions  at  issue  were  absolutely  fundamental. 
When  the  question  was  whether  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States  was  a  sure 


WASHINGTON  49 

defence  for  freedom  or  a  trap  to  ensnare 
an  unsuspecting  people,  intensity  of  feel 
ing  on  both  sides  was  well-nigh  inevitable. 
During  Washington's  two  administra 
tions  a  considerable  number  of  the  most 
eminent  American  publicists  feared  that 
dangerous  autocratic  powers  had  been 
conferred  on  the  President  by  the  Con 
stitution.  Washington  held  that  there 
was  no  ground  for  these  fears,  and  acted 
as  if  the  supposition  was  absurd.  When 
the  question  was  whether  we  should  love 
and  adhere  to  revolutionary  France,  or 
rather  become  partisans  of  Great  Britain 
-the  power  from  which  we  had  just 
won  independence  —  it  is  no  wonder  that 
political  passions  burnt  fiercely.  On  this 
question  Washington  stood  between  the 
opposing  parties,  and  often  commended 
himself  to  neither.  In  spite  of  the  tre 
mendous  partisan  heat  of  the  times, 


50     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

Washington,  through  both  his  adminis 
trations,  made  appointments  to  public 
office  from  both  parties  indifferently. 
He  appointed  some  well-known  Tories 
and  many  Democrats.  He  insisted  only 
on  fitness  as  regards  character,  ability, 
and  experience,  and  preferred  persons,  of 
whatever  party,  who  had  already  proved 
their  capacity  in  business  or  the  profes 
sions,  or  in  legislative  or  administrative 
offices.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  Wash 
ington  is  the  only  one  of  the  Presidents 
of  the  United  States  who  has,  as  a  rule, 
acted  on  these  principles.  His  example 
was  not  followed  by  his  early  successors, 
or  by  any  of  the  more  recent  occupants 
of  the  Presidency.  His  successors,  elected 
by  a  party,  have  not  seen  their  way  to 
make  appointments  without  regard  to 
party  connections.  The  Civil  Service 
Reform  agitation  of  the  last  twenty-five 


WASHINGTON  51 

years  is  nothing  but  an  effort  to  re 
turn,  in  regard  to  the  humbler  national 
offices,  to  the  practice  of  President 
Washington. 

In  spite  of  these  resemblances  between 
Washington's  time  and  our  own,  the  pro 
found  contrasts  make  the  resemblances 
seem  unimportant.  In  the  first  years 
of  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
there  was  widespread  and  genuine  appre 
hension  lest  the  executive  should  develop 
too  much  power,  and  lest  the  centraliza 
tion  of  the  Government  should  become 
overwhelming.  Nothing  can  be  farther 
from  our  political  thoughts  to-day  than 
this  dread  of  the  power  of  the  national 
executive.  On  the  contrary,  we  are  con 
stantly  finding  that  it  is  feeble  where  we 
wish  it  were  strong,  impotent  where  we 
wish  it  omnipotent.  The  Senate  of  the 
United  States  has  deprived  the  President 


52     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

of  much  of  the  power  intended  for  his 
office,  and  has  then  found  it,  on  the  whole, 
convenient  and  desirable  to  allow  itself  to 
be  held  up  by  any  one  of  its  members  who 
possesses  the  bodily  strength  and  the  as 
surance  to  talk  or  read  aloud  by  the  week. 
Other  forces  have  developed  within  the 
Republic  quite  outside  of  the  Government, 
which  seem  to  us  to  override  and  almost 
defy  the  closely  limited  governmental 
forces.  Quite  lately  we  have  seen  two 
of  these  new  forces  —  one  a  combination 
of  capitalists,  the  other  a  combination  of 
laborers  —  put  the  President  of  the  Uni 
ted  States  into  a  position  of  a  mediator  be 
tween  two  parties  whom  he  could  not  con 
trol,  and  with  whom  he  must  intercede. 
This  is  part  of  the  tremendous  nineteenth 
century  democratic  revolution,  and  of  the 
newly  acquired  facilities  for  combination 
and  association  for  the  promotion  of 


WASHINGTON  53 

common  interests.  We  no  longer  dread 
abuse  of  the  power  of  state  or  church ; 
we  do  dread  abuse  of  the  powers  of 
compact  bodies  of  men,  highly  organized 
and  consenting  to  be  despotically  ruled, 
for  the  advancement  of  their  selfish 
interests. 

Washington  was  a  stern  disciplinarian 
in  war  ;  if  he  could  not  shoot  deserters 
he  wanted  them  "  stoutly  whipped."  He 
thought  that  army  officers  should  be  of  a 
different  class  from  their  men,  and  should 
never  put  themselves  on  an  equality  with 
their  men ;  he  went  himself  to  suppress 
the  Whiskey  Rebellion  in  1794,  and 
always  believed  that  firm  government  was 
essential  to  freedom.  He  never  could 
have  imagined  for  a  moment  the  tolera 
tion  of  disorder  and  violence  which  is  now 
exhibited  everywhere  in  our  country  when 
a  serious  strike  occurs.  He  was  the  chief 


54     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

actor  through  the  long  struggles,  military 
and  civil,  which  attended  the  birth  of  this 
nation,  and  took  the  gravest  responsi 
bilities  which  could  then  fall  to  the  lot  of 
soldiers  or  statesmen ;  but  he  never  en 
countered,  and  indeed  never  imagined, 
the  anxieties  and  dangers  which  now 
beset  the  Republic  of  which  he  was  the 
founder.  We  face  new  difficulties.  Shall 
we  face  them  with  Washington's  courage, 
wisdom,  and  success  ? 

Finally,  I  ask  your  attention  to  the 
striking  contrast  between  the  wealth  of 
Washington  and  the  poverty  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  the  only  one  of  the  succeeding 
Presidents  who  won  anything  like  the 
place  in  the  popular  heart  that  Wash 
ington  has  always  occupied.  Washington, 
while  still  young,  was  one  of  the  richest 
men  in  the  country ;  Lincoln,  while  young, 
was  one  of  the  poorest ;  both  rendered  su- 


WASHINGTON  55 

preme  service  to  their  country  and  to 
freedom ;  between  these  two  extremes 
men  of  many  degrees  as  regards  property 
holding  have  occupied  the  Presidency,  the 
majority  of  them  being  men  of  moderate 
means.  The  lesson  to  be  drawn  from 
these  facts  seems  to  be  that  the  Republic 
can  be  greatly  served  by  rich  and  poor 
alike,  but  has  oftenest  been  served  credit 
ably  by  men  who  were  neither  rich  nor 
poor.  In  the  midst  of  the  present  con 
flicts  between  employers  and  employed, 
between  the  classes  that  are  already  well 
to  do  and  the  classes  who  believe  it  to  be 
the  fault  of  the  existing  order  that  they 
too  are  not  well  to  do,  and  in  plain  sight 
of  the  fact  that  democratic  freedom  per 
mits  the  creation  and  perpetuation  of 
greater  differences  as  regards  possessions 
than  the  world  has  ever  known  before, 
it  is  comforting  to  remember  that  true 


56     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

patriots  and  wise  men  are  bred  in  all 
the  social  levels  of  a  free  commonwealth, 
and  that  the  Republic  may  find  in  any 
condition  of  life  safe  leaders  and  just 
rulers. 


CHANNING 


CHANNING 

WE  commemorate  to-day  a  great 
preacher.  It  is  the  fashion  to  say  that 
preaching  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  other 
influences  having  taken  its  place.  But 
Boston  knows  better ;  for  she  had  two 
great  preachers  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  is  sure  that  an  immense  and  enduring 
force  was  theirs,  and  through  them,  hers. 
Channing  and  Brooks  !  Men  very  unlike 
in  body  and  mind,  but  preachers  of  like 
tendency  and  influence  from  their  com 
mon  love  of  freedom  and  faith  in  mankind. 
This  city  has  learned  by  rich  experi 
ence  that  preaching  becomes  the  most 
productive  of  all  human  works  the  mo 
ment  the  adequate  preacher  appears  — 


60     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

a  noble  man  with  a  noble  message.    Such 
was  Channing. 

His  public  work  was  preceded  and  ac 
companied  by  a  great  personal  achieve 
ment.  All  his  life  he  grew  in  spirit, 
becoming  always  freer,  broader,  and  more 
sympathetic.  In  forty  years  he  worked 
his  way  out  of  moderate  Calvinism  with 
out  the  Trinity  into  such  doctrines  as 
these:  — "The  idea  of  God  ...  is  the 
idea  of  our  own  spiritual  natures  purified 
and  enlarged  to  infinity."  "  The  sense 
of  duty  is  the  greatest  gift  of  God.  The 
idea  of  right  is  the  primary  and  highest 
revelation  of  God  to  the  human  mind  ; 
and  all  outward  revelations  are  founded 
on  and  addressed  to  it."  There  is  "  but 
one  object  of  cherished  and  enduring  love 
in  heaven  or  on  earth,  and  that  is  moral 
goodness."  "  I  do  and  I  must  reverence 
human  nature.  I  honor  it  for  its 


CHANNING  61 

struggles  against  oppression,  for  its 
growth  and  progress  under  the  weight 
of  so  many  chains  and  prejudices,  for 
its  achievements  in  science  and  art,  and 
still  more  for  its  examples  of  heroic 
and  saintly  virtue.  These  are  marks  of  a 
divine  origin  and  pledges  of  a  celestial 
inheritance."  "  Perfection  is  man's  proper 
and  natural  goal."  What  an  immense 
distance  between  these  doctrines  of  Chan- 
ning's  maturity  and  the  Calvinism  of  his 
youth  !  He  was  a  meditative,  reflecting 
man,  who  read  much,  but  took  selected 
thoughts  of  others  into  the  very  substance 
and  fibre  of  his  being,  and  made  them  his 
own.  The  foundation  of  his  professional 
power  and  public  influence  was  this  great 
personal  achievement,  this  attuning  of  his 
own  soul  to  noblest  harmonies. 

Thousands  of  ministers  and  spiritually- 
minded  laymen  of  many  denominations 


62     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

have  travelled  since  Channing's  death  the 
road  he  laid  out,  and  so  have  been  delivered 
from  the  inhuman  doctrines  of  the  fall  of 
man,  the  wrath  of  God,  vicarious  atone 
ment,  everlasting  hell  for  the  majority, 
and  the  rescue  of  a  predestined  few. 
They  should  all  join  in  giving  heartfelt 
praise  and  thanks  to  Channing,  who 
thought  out  clearly,  and  preached  with  fer 
vid  reiteration,  the  doctrines  which  have 
delivered  them  from  a  painful  bondage. 

Another  remarkable  quality  of  Chan 
ning's  teachings  is  their  universality.  Men 
of  learning  and  spirituality  in  all  the 
civilized  nations  have  welcomed  his 
words,  and  found  in  them  teachings  ot 
enduring  and  expansive  influence.  Many 
Biblical  scholars,  in  the  technical  sense, 
have  arrived  eighty  years  later  at  Chan 
ning's  conclusions  about  the  essential 
features  of  Christianity,  although  Chan- 


CHANNING  63 

ning  was  no  scholar  in  the  modern  sense  ; 
while  they  go  far  beyond  him  in  treating 
the  Bible  as  a  collection  of  purely  human 
writings  and  in  rejecting  the  so-called 
supernatural  quality  of  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  Scriptures.  Indeed,  many  Bibli 
cal  scholars  belonging  to-day  to  evan 
gelical  sects  have  arrived  not  only  at 
Channing's  position,  but  also  at  Emer 
son's. 

Just  how  much  Channing's  published 
works  have  had  to  do  with  this  quiet 
but  fateful  revolution  no  man  can  tell. 
The  most  eminent  to-day  of  American 
Presbyterian  divines  preached  an  excel 
lent  sermon  in  the  Harvard  College 
Chapel  one  Sunday  evening  not  many 
years  ago,  and  asked  me,  as  we  walked 
away  together,  how  I  liked  it.  I  replied  : 
"  Very  much ;  it  was  all  straight  out  ot 
Channing."  "  That  is  strange,"  he  said, 


64     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

"for  I  have  never  read  C banning. "  It 
is  great  testimony  to  the  pervasive  qual 
ity  of  a  prophet's  teachings  when  they 
become  within  fifty  years  a  component 
of  the  intellectual  atmosphere  of  the 
new  times.  At  a  dinner  of  Harvard 
graduates  I  once  complained  that,  al 
though  I  heard  in  the  College  Chapel 
a  great  variety  of  preachers  connected 
with  many  different  denominations,  the 
preaching  was,  after  all,  rather  monoto 
nous,  because  they  all  preached  Chan- 
ning.  Phillips  Brooks  spoke  after  me 
and  said :  "  The  President  is  right  in 
thinking  our  present  preaching  monoto 
nous,  and  the  reason  he  gives  for  this 
monotony  is  correct ;  we  all  do  preach 
Channing." 

The  direct  influence  of  Channing's 
writings  has  been  vast,  for  they  are  read 
in  English  in  all  parts  of  the  world, 


CHANNING  65 

and  have  been  translated  into  many  lan 
guages.  Thirty  years  ago  I  spent  a  long 
day  in  showing  Don  Pedro,  the  Emperor 
of  Brazil,  some  of  the  interesting  things 
in  the  laboratories  and  collections  of  Har 
vard  University.  He  was  the  most  as 
siduous  visitor  that  I  ever  conducted 
through  the  University  buildings,  intelli 
gently  interested  in  a  great  variety  of 
objects  and  ideas.  Late  in  the  afternoon 
he  suddenly  said,  with  a  fresh  eagerness : 
"  Now  I  will  visit  the  tomb  of  Channing." 
We  drove  to  Mount  Auburn,  and  found 
the  monument  erected  by  the  Federal 
Street  Church.  The  Emperor  copied 
with  his  own  hand  George  Ticknor's  in 
scriptions  on  the  stone,  and  made  me 
verify  his  copies.  Then,  with  his  great 
weight  and  height,  he  leaped  into  the  air, 
and  snatched  a  leaf  from  the  maple  which 
overhung  the  tomb.  "  I  am  going  to  put 


66     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

that  leaf,"  he  said,  "  into  my  best  edition 
of  Channing.  I  have  read  all  his  pub 
lished  works,  —  some  of  them  many  times 
over.  He  was  a  very  great  man."  The 
Emperor  of  Brazil  was  a  Roman  Catholic. 
Channing's  philanthropy  was  a  legiti 
mate  outcome  of  his  view  of  religion. 
For  him  practical  religion  was  character- 
building  by  the  individual  human  being. 
But  character-building  in  any  large  group 
or  mass  of  human  beings  means  social  re 
form  ;  therefore  Channing  was  a  preacher 
and  active  promoter  of  social  regeneration 
in  this  world.  He  depicted  the  hideous 
evils  and  wrongs  of  intemperance,  slavery, 
and  war.  He  advocated  and  supported 
every  well-directed  effort  to  improve  pub 
lic  education,  the  administration  of  charity, 
and  the  treatment  of  criminals,  and  to  lift 
up  the  laboring  classes.  He  denounced 
the  bitter  sectarian  and  partisan  spirit  of 


CHANNING  67 

his  day.  He  refused  entire  sympathy  to 
the  abolitionists,  because  of  the  ferocity 
and  violence  of  their  habitual  language 
and  the  injustice  of  their  indiscriminate 
attacks.  He  distrusted  money  worship, 
wealth,  and  luxury. 

These  sentiments  and  actions  grew 
straight  out  of  his  religious  conceptions, 
and  were  their  legitimate  fruit.  All  his 
social  aspirations  and  hopes  were  rooted 
in  his  fundamental  conception  of  the 
fatherhood  of  God,  and  its  corollary  the 
brotherhood  of  men.  It  was  his  lofty  idea 
of  the  infinite  worth  of  human  nature  and 
of  the  inherent  greatness  of  the  human 
soul,  in  contrast  with  the  then  prevailing 
doctrines  of  human  vileness  and  impo- 
tency,  which  made  him  resent  with  such 
indignation  the  wrongs  of  slavery,  intem 
perance,  and  war,  and  urge  with  such 
ardor  every  effort  to  deliver  men  from 


68  FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

poverty    and    ignorance,    and    to    make 
them  gentler  and  juster  to  one  another. 

In  no  subject  which  he  discussed  does 
the  close  connection  between  Channing's 
theology  and  his  philanthropy  appear  more 
distinctly  than  in  education.  He  says  in 
his  remarks  on  education  :  .  .  .  "  There  is 
nothing  on  earth  so  precious  as  the  mind, 
soul,  character  of  the  child.  .  .  .  There 
should  be  no  economy  in  education.  Mon 
ey  should  never  be  weighed  against  the 
soul  of  a  child.  It  should  be  poured  out 
like  water  for  the  child's  intellectual  and 
moral  life."  It  is  more  than  two  genera 
tions  since  those  sentences  were  written, 
and  still  the  average  public  expenditure 
on  the  education  of  a  child  in  the  United 
States  is  less  than  fifteen  dollars  a  year. 
Eastern  Massachusetts  is  the  commu 
nity  in  the  whole  world  which  gives  most 
thought,  time,  and  money  to  education, 


CHANNING  69 

public  and  endowed.  Whence  came  this 
social  wisdom  ?  From  Protestantism,  from 
Congregationalism,  from  the  religious 
teachings  of  Channing  and  his  disciples. 
Listen  to  this  sentence:  "Benevolence  is 
short-sighted  indeed,  and  must  blame  itself 
for  failure,  if  it  do  not  see  in  education 
the  chief  interest  of  the  human  race." 

It  is  impossible  to  join  in  this  centen 
nial  celebration  of  the  advent  to  Boston 
of  this  religious  pioneer  and  philanthropic 
leader  without  perceiving  that  in  certain 
respects  the  country  has  recently  fallen 
away  from  the  moral  standards  he  set  up. 
Channing  taught  that  no  real  good  can 
come  through  violence,  injustice,  greed, 
and  the  inculcation  of  hatred  and  enmities, 
or  of  suspicions  and  contempts.  He  be 
lieved  that  public  well-being  can  be  pro 
moted  only  through  public  justice,  freedom, 
peace,  and  good  will  among  men. 


70     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

He  never  could  have  imagined  that 
there  would  be  an  outburst  in  his  dear 
country,  grown  rich  and  strong,  of  such 
doctrines  as  that  the  might  of  arms, 
possessions,  or  majorities  makes  right ; 
that  a  superior  civilization  may  rightly 
force  itself  on  an  inferior  by  wholesale 
killing,  hurting,  and  impoverishing ;  that 
an  extension  of  commerce,  or  of  mission 
ary  activities,  justifies  war ;  that  the  ex 
ample  of  imperial  Rome  is  an  instructive 
one  for  republican  America  ;  and  that  the 
right  to  liberty  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man  are  obsolete  sentimentalities. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  these  tempo 
rary  aberrations  of  the  public  mind  and 
heart,  it  is  plain  that  many  of  Channing's 
anticipations  and  hopes  have  already  been 
realized,  that  his  influence  on  three  gen 
erations  of  men  has  been  profound  and 
wholly  beneficent,  and  that  the  world  is 


CHANNING  71 

going  his  way,  though  with  slow  and 
halting  steps. 

His  life  brightened  to  its  close.  In 
its  last  summer  but  one  he  wrote :  "  This 
morning  I  plucked  a  globe  of  the  dande 
lion —  the  seed-vessel  —  and  was  struck 
as  never  before  with  the  silent,  gentle 
manner  in  which  nature  sows  her  seed. 
...  I  saw,  too,  how  nature  sows  her  seed 
broadcast.  ...  So  we  must  send  truth 
abroad,  not  forcing  it  on  here  and  there 
a  mind,  and  watching  its  progress  anx 
iously,  but  trusting  that  it  will  light  on  a 
kindly  soil,  and  yield  its  fruit.  So  nature 
teaches." 

May  those  who  stand  here  one  hun 
dred  years  hence  say,  —  the  twentieth 
century  supplied  more  of  kindly  soil  for 
Channing  seed  than  the  nineteenth. 


EMERSON 


EMERSON 

EMERSON  was  not  a  logician  or  reasoner, 
and  not  a  rhetorician,  in  the  common 
sense.  He  was  a  poet,  who  wrote  chiefly 
in  prose,  but  also  in  verse.  His  verse  was 
usually  rough,  but  sometimes  finished  and 
melodious ;  it  was  always  extraordinarily 
concise  and  expressive.  During  his  en 
gagement  to  the  lady  who  became  his 
second  wife,  he  wrote  thus  to  her :  "  I  am 
born  a  poet,  —  of  a  low  class  without 
doubt,  yet  a  poet ;  that  is  my  nature  and 
vocation.  My  singing,  be  sure,  is  very 
husky,  and  is,  for  the  most  part,  in  prose. 
Still,  I  am  a  poet  in  the  sense  of  a  per- 
ceiver  and  dear  lover  of  the  harmonies 
that  are  in  the  soul  and  in  matter,  and 


76     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

specially  of  the  correspondences  between 
these  and  those." 

This  husky  poet  had  his  living  to  get. 
His  occupations  in  life  were  those  of  the 
teacher,  minister,  lecturer,  and  author. 
He  was  a  teacher  at  various  times  be 
tween  1818  and  1826;  but  he  never 
liked  teaching.  He  was  a  preacher  at 
intervals  from  1826  to  1847,  but  a  settled 
minister  only  from  1829  to  1832.  His 
career  as  a  lecturer  began  in  the  autumn 
of  1833 ;  and  his  first  book,  "  Nature,"  was 
published  in  1836,  when  he  was  thirty- 
three  years  old.  His  lectures  for  money 
were  given  as  a  rule  during  the  winter 
and  early  spring ;  and  for  thirty  years  the 
travelling  he  was  obliged  to  do  in  search 
of  audiences  was  often  extremely  fatiguing, 
and  not  without  serious  hardships  and  ex 
posures.  These  occupations  usually  gave 
him  an  income  sufficient  for  his  simple 


EMERSON  77 

wants ;  but  there  were  times  when  outgo 
exceeded  income.  The  little  property 
his  first  wife  left  him  ($1200  a  year)  re 
lieved  him  from  serious  pecuniary  anxiety 
by  1834 ;  although  it  did  not  relieve  him 
from  earning  by  his  own  labor  the  liveli 
hood  of  his  family. 

In  1834  he  went  to  live  in  Concord, 
where  his  grandfather  had  been  the  min 
ister  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  and 
in  1835  he  bought  the  house  and  grounds 
there  which  were  his  home  for  the  rest 
of  his  days.  Before  settling  in  Concord, 
he  had  spent  one  winter  and  spring 
(1826-27)  in  the  Southern  states,  and 
seven  months  of  1833  in  Europe.  Both 
of  these  absences  were  necessitated  by 
the  state  of  his  health,  which  was 
precarious  during  his  young  manhood. 
With  these  exceptions,  he  had  lived  in 
Boston  or  its  immediate  neighborhood, 


78     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

until  he  settled  in  Concord.  His  pro 
genitors  on  both  sides  were  chiefly  New 
England  ministers.  His  formal  educa 
tion  was  received  in  the  Boston  Latin 
School  and  Harvard  College,  and  was 
therefore  purely  local.  How  narrow  and 
provincial  seems  his  experience  of  life ! 
A  little  city,  an  isolated  society,  a  country 
village  !  Yet  through  books,  and  through 
intercourse  with  intelligent  persons,  he 
was  really  "set  in  a  large  place."  The 
proof  of  this  largeness,  and  of  the  keen 
ness  of  his  mental  and  moral  vision,  is 
that,  in  regard  to  some  of  the  chief  con 
cerns  of  mankind,  he  was  a  seer  and  a 
fore-seer.  This  prophetic  quality  of  his  I 
hope  to  demonstrate  to-night  in  three 
great  fields  of  thought,  —  education,  social 
organization,  and  religion. 

Although  a  prophet  and  inspirer  of  re- 

r^  ^\  * 

form,  Emerson  was  not  a  reformer.     He 


EMERSON  79 

was  but  a  halting  supporter  of  the  reforms 
of  his  day  ;  and  the  eager  experimenters 
and  combatants  in  actual  reforms  found 
him  a  disappointing  sort  of  sympathizer. 
His  visions  were  far-reaching,  his  doctrines 
often  radical,  and  his  exhortations  fervid  ; 
but  when  it  came  to  action,  particularly 
to  habitual  action,  he  was  surprisingly 
conservative.  With  an  exquisite  candor, 
and  a  gentle  resolution  of  rarest  quality 
he  broke  his  strong  ties  to  the  Second 
Church  of  Boston  before  he  was  thirty 
years  old,  abandoning  the  profession  for 
which  he  had  been  trained,  and  which, 
in  many  of  its  aspects,  he  honored  and 
enjoyed ;  yet  he  attended  church  on  Sun 
days  all  his  life  with  uncommon  regu 
larity.  He  refused  to  conduct  public 
prayer,  and  had  many  things  to  say 
against  it;  but  when  he  was  an  Over 
seer  of  Harvard  College,  he  twice  voted 


80     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

to  maintain  the  traditional  policy  of  com 
pelling  all  the  students  to  attend  morning 
prayers,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  a  large 
majority  of  the  Faculty  urgently  advo 
cated  abandoning  that  policy.  He  mani 
fested  a  good  deal  of  theoretical  sympathy 
with  the  community  experiments  at  Brook 
Farm  and  Fruitlands  ;  but  he  declined  to 
take  part  in  them  himself.  He  was  inti 
mate  with  many  of  the  leading  aboli 
tionists;  but  no  one  has  described  more 
vividly  their  grave  intellectual  and  social 
defects.  He  laid  down  principles  which, 
when  applied,  would  inevitably  lead  to 
progress  and  reform  ;  but  he  took  little 
part  in  the  imperfect  step-by-step  process 
of  actual  reforming.  He  probably  would 
have  been  an  ineffective  worker  in  any 
field  of  reform ;  and,  at  any  rate,  strenu 
ous  labor  on  applications  of  his  philosophy 
would  have  prevented  him  from  main- 


EMERSON  81 

taining  the  flow  of  his  philosophic  and 
prophetic  visions.  The  work  of  giving 
practical  effect  to  his  thought  was  left  for 
other  men  to  do,  —  indeed  for  generations 
of  other  serviceable  men,  who,  filled  with 
his  ideals,  will  slowly  work  them  out  into 
institutions,  customs,  and  other  practical 
values. 

When  we  think  of  Emerson  as  a 
prophet,  we  at  once  become  interested  in 
the  dates  at  which  he  uttered  certain 
doctrines,  or  wrote  certain  pregnant  sen 
tences ;  but  just  here  the  inquirer  meets 
a  serious  difficulty.  He  can  sometimes 
ascertain  that  a  given  doctrine  or  sen_ 
tence  was  published  at  a  given  date  ;  but 
he  may  be  quite  unable  to  ascertain  how 
much  earlier  the  doctrine  was  really  for 
mulated,  or  the  sentence  written.  Emer 
son  has  been  dead  twenty-one  years,  and 
it  is  thirty  years  since  he  wrote  anything 


82     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

new ;  but  his  whole  philosophy  of  life  was 
developed  by  the  time  he  was  forty  years 
old,  and  it  may  be  doubted  if  he  wrote 
anything  after  1843,  the  germinal  expres 
sion  of  which  may  not  be  found  in  his 
journals,  sermons,  or  lectures  written  be 
fore  that  date.  If,  therefore,  we  find  in 
the  accepted  thought,  or  established  insti 
tutions,  of  to-day  recent  developments  of 
principles  and  maxims  laid  down  by 
Emerson,  we  may  fairly  say  that  his 
thought  outran  his  times  certainly  by 
one,  and  probably  by  two  generations  of 
men. 

I  take  up  now  the  prophetic  teachings 
of  Emerson  with  regard  to  education.  In 
the  first  place,  he  saw,  with  a  clearness  to 
which  very  few  people  have  yet  attained, 
the  fundamental  necessity  of  the  school  as 
the  best  civilizing  agency,  next  to  steady 


EMERSON  83 

labor,  and  the  only  sure  means  of  perma 
nent  and  progressive  reform.  He  says 
outright :  "  We  shall  one  day  learn  to 
supersede  politics  by  education.  What 
we  call  our  root-and-branch  reforms,  of 
slavery,  war,  gambling,  intemperance,  is 
only  medicating  the  symptoms.  We  must 
begin  higher  up  —  namely,  in  education." 

\ 

He  taught  that  if  we  hope  to  reform 
mankind,  we  must  begin  not  with  adults, 
but  with  children :  we  must  begin  in  the 
school.  There  are  some  signs  that  this 
doctrine  has  now  at  last  entered  the  minds 
of  the  so-called  practical  men.  The 
Cubans  are  to  be  raised  in  the  scale  of 
civilization  and  public  happiness ;  so  both 
they  and  we  think  they  must  have  more 
and  better  schools.  The  Filipinos,  too, 
are  to  be  developed  after  the  American 
fashion ;  so  we  send  them  a  thousand 
teachers  of  English.  The  Southern  states 


84     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

are  to  be  rescued  from  the  persistent 
poison  of  slavery;  and,  after  forty  years 
of  failure  with  political  methods,  we  at 
last  accept  Emerson's  doctrine,  and  say  : 
We  must  begin  earlier,  —  at  school.  The 
city  slums  are  to  be  redeemed ;  and  the 
scientific  charity  workers  find  the  best 
way  is  to  get  the  children  into  kinder 
gartens  and  manual  training  schools. 

Since  the  Civil  War,  a  whole  genera 
tion  of  educational  administrators  has  been 
steadily  at  work  developing  what  is  called 
the  elective  system  in  the  institutions  of 
education  which  deal  with  the  ages  above 
twelve.  It  has  been  a  slow,  step-by-step 
process,  carried  on  against  much  active 
opposition  and  more  sluggish  obstruction. 
The  system  is  a  method  of  educational 
organization  which  recognizes  the  immense 
expansion  of  knowledge  during  the  nine 
teenth  century,  and  takes  account  of  the 


EMERSON  85 

needs  and  capacities  of  the  individual  child 
and  youth.  Now,  Emerson  laid  down  in 
plain  terms  the  fundamental  doctrines  on 
which  this  elective  system  rests.  He 
taught  that  the  one  prudence  in  life  is 
concentration  ;  the  one  evil,  dissipation. 
He  said  :  "  You  must  elect  your  work : 
you  shall  take  what  your  brain  can,  and 
drop  all  the  rest."  To  this  exhortation 
he  added  the  educational  reason  for  it,  - 
only  by  concentration  can  the  youth 
arrive  at  the  stage  of  doing  something 
with  his  knowledge,  or  get  beyond  the 
stage  of  absorbing,  and  arrive  at  the  capa 
city  for  producing.  As  Emerson  puts  it, 
"  Only  so  can  that  amount  of  vital  force 
accumulate  which  can  make  the  step  from 
knowing  to  doing."  The  educational  in 
stitutions  of  to-day  have  not  yet  fully 
appreciated  this  all-important  step  from 
knowing  to  doing.  They  are  only  begin- 


86     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

ning  to  perceive  that,  all  along  the  course 
of  education,  the  child  and  the  youth 
should  be  doing  something  as  well  as 
learning  something  ;  should  be  stimulated 
and  trained  by  achievement ;  should  be 
constantly  encouraged  to  take  the  step 
beyond  seeing  and  memorizing  to  doing, 
—  the  step,  as  Emerson  says,  "out  of  a 
chalk  circle  of  imbecility  into  fruitfulness." 
Emerson  carried  this  doctrine  right  on 
into  mature  life.  He  taught  that  nature 
arms  each  man  with  some  faculty,  large 
or  small,  which  enables  him  to  do  easily 
some  feat  impossible  to  any  other,  and 
thus  makes  him  necessary  to  society  ;  and 
that  this  faculty  should  determine  the 
man's  career.  The  advocates  of  the  elec 
tive  system  have  insisted  that  its  results 
were  advantageous  for  society  as  a  whole, 
as  well  as  for  the  individual.  Emerson 
put  this  argument  in  a  nutshell  at  least 


EMERSON  87 

fifty  years  ago :  "  Society  can  never  pros 
per,  but  must  always  be  bankrupt,  until 
every  man  does  that  which  he  was  created 
to  do." 

Education  used  to  be  given  almost  ex 
clusively  through  books.  In  recent  years 
there  has  come  in  another  sort  of  educa 
tion  through  tools,  machines,  gardens, 
drawings,  casts,  and  pictures.  Manual 
training,  shop-work,  sloyd,  and  gardening 
have  come  into  use  for  the  school  ages  ; 
the  teaching  of  trades  has  been  admitted 
to  some  public  school  systems ;  and,  in 
general,  the  use  of  the  hands  and  eyes  in 
productive  labor  has  been  recognized  as 
having  good  educational  effects.  The 
education  of  men  by  manual  labor  was  a 
favorite  doctrine  with  Emerson.  He  had 
fully  developed  it  as  early  as  1837,  and  he 
frequently  recurred  to  it  afterwards.  In 
December  of  that  year,  in  a  course  of 


88     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

lectures  on  Human  Culture,  he  devoted 
one  lecture  to  The  Hands.  He  saw 
clearly  that  manual  labor  might  be  made 
to  develop  not  only  good  mental  qualities, 
but  good  moral  qualities.  To-day,  it  is 
frequently  necessary  for  practical  teachers, 
who  are  urging  measures  of  improve 
ment,  to  point  this  out,  and  to  say,  just 
as  Emerson  said  two  generations  ago, 
that  any  falseness  in  mechanical  work 
immediately  appears ;  that  a  teacher  can 
judge  of  the  moral  quality  of  each  boy  in 
the  class  before  him  better  and  sooner 
from  manual  work  than  from  book-work. 
Emerson  taught  that  manual  labor  is  the 
study  of  the  external  world  ;  that  the  use 
of  manual  labor  never  grows  obsolete,  and 
is  inapplicable  to  no  person.  He  said  ex 
plicitly  that  "  a  man  should  have  a  farm 
or  a  mechanical  craft  for  his  culture  " ;  that 
there  is  not  only  health,  but  education  in 


EMERSON  89 

garden  work ;  that  when  a  man  gets  sugar, 
hominy,  cotton,  buckets,  crockery  ware, 
and  letter  paper  by  simply  signing  his 
name  to  a  cheque,  it  is  the  producers  and 
carriers  of  these  articles  that  have  got  the 
education  they  yield,  he  only  the  com 
modity  ;  and  that  labor  is  God's  education. 
This  was  Emerson's  doctrine  more  than 
sixty  years  ago.  It  is  only  ten  years  since 
the  Mechanic  Arts  High  School  was 
opened  in  Boston. 

We  are  all  of  us  aware  that  within  the 
last  twenty  years  there  has  been  a  deter 
mined  movement  of  the  American  people  j 
toward  the  cultivation  of  art,  and  toward 
the  public  provision  of  objects  which  open 
the  sense  of  beauty  and  increase  public  en 
joyment.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  literally 
Emerson  prophesied  the  actual  direction 
of  these  efforts :  — 


90     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

"  On  the  city's  paved  street 
Plant  gardens  lined  with  lilac  sweet ; 
Let  spouting  fountains  cool  the  air, 
Singing  in  the  sun-baked  square  ; 
Let  statue,  picture,  park,  and  hall, 
Ballad,  flag,  and  festival 
The  past  restore,  the  day  adorn, 
And  make  to-morrow  a  new  morn  ! " 

We  have  introduced  into  our  schools, 
of  late  years,  lessons  in  drawing,  model 
ling,  and  designing,  —  not  sufficiently,  but 
in  a  promising  and  hopeful  way.  Emer 
son  taught  that  it  is  the  office  of  art  to 
educate  the  perception  of  beauty  ;  and  he 
precisely  describes  one  of  the  most  recent 
of  the  new  tendencies  in  American  educa 
tion  and  social  life,  when  he  says  :  "  Beauty 
must  come  back  to  the  useful  arts,  and 
the  distinction  between  the  fine  and  the 
useful  arts  be  forgotten."  That  sentence 
is  the  inspiration  of  one  of  the  most  recent 
of  the  efforts  to  improve  the  arts  and 


EMERSON  91 

crafts,  and  to  restore  to  society  the  artistic 
craftsman.  But  how  slow  is  the  institu 
tional  realization  of  this  ideal  of  art  edu 
cation  !  We  are  still  struggling  in  our 
elementary  and  secondary  schools  to  get 
a  reasonable  amount  of  instruction  in 
drawing  and  music,  and  to  transfer  from 
other  subjects  a  fair  allotment  of  time  to 
these  invaluable  elements  of  true  culture, 
which  speak  a  universal  language.  Yet 
the  ultimate  object  of  art  in  education  is 
to  teach  men  to  see  nature  to  be  beautiful! 
and  at  the  same  time  useful,  beautiful 
because  alive  and  reproductive,  useful 
while  symmetrical  and  fair.  Take  up  to 
day  the  last  essays  on  education,  the  last 
book  on  landscape  architecture,  or  the 
freshest  teachings  of  the  principles  of  de 
sign,  and  you  will  find  them  penetrated 
with  Emerson's  doctrine  of  art  as  teacher 
of  mankind.  Emerson  insists  again  and 


92     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

again  that  true  culture  must  open  the 
sense  of  beauty  ;  that  "  a  man  is  a  beggar 
who  only  lives  to  the  useful."  It  will 
probably  require  several  generations  yet 
to  induce  the  American  people  to  accept 
his  doctrine  that  all  moments  and  objects 
can  be  embellished,  and  that  cheerfulness, 
serenity,  and  repose  in  energy  are  the  "  end 
of  culture  and  success  enough." 

It  has  been  clearly  perceived  of  late 
that  a  leading  object  in  education  is  the 
cultivation  of  fine  manners.  On  this 
point  the  teachings  of  Emerson  are  fun 
damental  ;  but  the  American  institutions 
of  education  are  only  beginning  to  appre 
ciate  their  significance.  He  teaches  that 
genius  or  love  invents  fine  manners, 
"  which  the  baron  and  the  baroness  copy 
very  fast,  and  by  the  advantage  of  a 
palace  better  the  instruction.  They 
stereotype  the  lesson  they  have  learned 


EMERSON  93 

into  a  mode."  There  is  much  in  that 
phrase,  "by  the  advantage  of  a  palace." 
For  generations,  American  institutions  of 
education  were  content  with  the  humblest 
sort  of  shelters,  with  plain  wooden  huts 
and  brick  barracks,  and  unkempt  grounds 
about  the  buildings.  They  are  only  lately 
beginning  to  acquire  fine  buildings  with 
pleasing  surroundings  ;  that  is,  they  are 
just  beginning  to  carry  into  practice 
Emerson's  wisdom  of  sixty  years  ago. 
The  American  cities  are  beginning  to 
build  handsome  houses  for  their  High 
Schools.  Columbia  University  builds  a 
noble  temple  for  its  library.  The  gradu 
ates  and  friends  of  Harvard  like  to  pro 
vide  her  with  a  handsome  fence  round  the 
Yard,  with  a  fair  array  of  shrubs  within 
the  fence,  with  a  handsome  stadium  in 
stead  of  shabby,  wooden  seats  round  the 
football  gridiron,  and  to  take  steps  for 


94     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

securing  in  the  future  broad  connections 
between  the  grounds  of  the  University 
and  the  Cambridge  parks  by  the  river. 
They  are  just  now  carrying  into  practice 
Emerson's  teaching  ;  by  the  advantage  of 
a  palace  they  mean  to  better  Harvard's 
instruction  in  manners.  They  are  ac 
cepting  his  doctrine  that  "  manners  make 
the  fortune  of  the  ambitious  youth  ;  that 
for  the  most  part  his  manners  marry  him, 
and,  for  the  most  part,  he  marries  man 
ners.  When  we  think  what  keys  they 
are,  and  to  what  secrets ;  what  high  les 
sons,  and  inspiring  tokens  of  character 
they  convey,  and  what  divination  is  re 
quired  in  us  for  the  reading  of  this  fine 
telegraph,  —  we  see  what  range  the  sub 
ject  has,  and  what  relations  to  convenience, 
power,  and  beauty." 

In    Emerson's    early    days    there    was 
nothing  in  our  schools  and  colleges  which 


EMERSON  95 

at  all  corresponded  to  what  we  now  know 
too  much  about  under  the  name  of  athle 
tic  sports.  The  elaborate  organization  of 
these  sports  is  a  development  of  the  last 
thirty  years  in  our  schools  and  colleges ; 
but  I  find  in  Emerson  the  true  reason  for 
the  athletic  cult,  given  a  generation  before 
it  existed  among  us.  Your  boy  "hates 
the  grammar  and  Gradus,  and  loves  guns, 
fishing-rods,  horses,  and  boats.  Well,  the 
boy  is  right,  and  you  are  not  fit  to  direct 
his  bringing-up,  if  your  theory  leaves  out 
his  gymnastic  training.  .  .  .  Football, 
cricket,  archery,  swimming,  skating,  climb 
ing,  fencing,  riding  are  lessons  in  the  art 
of  power,  which  it  is  his  main  business  to 
learn.  .  .  .  Besides,  the  gun,  fishing-rod, 
boat,  and  horse  constitute,  among  all  who 
use  them,  secret  free-masonries."  We 
shall  never  find  a  completer  justification 
of  athletic  sports  than  that. 


96     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

In  his  memorable  address  on  The 
American  Scholar,  which  was  given  at 
Cambridge  in  1837,  Emerson  pointed  out 
that  the  function  of  the  scholar  should  in 
clude  creative  action,  or,  as  we  call  it  in 
these  days,  research,  or  the  search  for  new 
truth.  He  says :  "  The  soul  active  .  .  . 
utters  truth,  or  creates.  ...  In  its  essence 
it  is  progressive.  The  book,  the  college, 
the  school  of  art,  the  institution  of  any 
kind,  stop  with  some  past  utterance  of 
genius.  .  .  .  They  look  backward  and  not 
forward.  But  genius  looks  forward.  Man 
hopes  :  genius  creates.  Whatever  talents 
may  be,  if  the  man  create  not,  the  pure 
efflux  of  the  Deity  is  not  his  ;  —  cinders 
and  smoke  there  may  be,  but  not  yet 
flame."  And  more  explicitly  still,  he 
says  :  "  Colleges  have  their  indispensable 
office, — to  teach  elements.  But  they 
can  only  highly  serve  us  when  they  aim 


EMERSON  97 

not  to  drill,  but  to  create."  When  Emer 
son  wrote  this  passage,  the  spirit  of  re 
search,  or  discovery,  or  creation  had  not 
yet  breathed  life  into  the  higher  institu 
tions  of  learning  in  our  country ;  and 
to-day  they  have  much  to  do  and  to 
acquire  before  they  will  conform  to 
Emerson's  ideal. 

There  are  innumerable  details  in  which 
Emerson  anticipated  the  educational  ex 
periences  of  later  generations.  I  can  cite 
but  two  of  them.  He  taught  that  each 
age  must  write  its  own  books  ;  "  or  rather, 
each  generation  for  the  next  succeeding. 
The  books  of  an  older  period  will  not  fit 
this."  How  true  that  is  in  our  own  day  \\ 
when  eighty  thousand  new  books  come 
from  the  press  of  the  civilized  world  in  a 
single  year !  Witness  the  incessant  re 
making  or  re-casting  of  the  books  of  the 
preceding  generation  !  Emerson  himself 


98     FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

has  gone  into  thousands  of  books  in  which 
his  name  is  never  mentioned.  Even  his 
tory  has  to  be  re-written  every  few  years, 
the  long-surviving  histories  being  rather 
monuments  of  style  and  method  than  ac 
cepted  treasuries  of  facts.  Again,  con 
trary  to  the  prevailing  impression  that  the 
press  has,  in  large  measure,  stripped  elo 
quence  of  its  former  influence,  Emerson 
taught  that  "if  there  ever  was  a  country 
where  eloquence  was  a  power,  it  is  the 
United  States."  He  included  under  elo 
quence  the  useful  speech,  all  sorts  of 
political  persuasion  in  the  great  arena  of 
the  Republic,  and  the  lessons  of  science, 
art,  and  religion  which  should  be  "  brought 
home  to  the  instant  practice  of  thirty 
millions  of  people,"  now  become  eighty. 
The  colleges  and  universities  have  now 
answered  in  the  affirmative  Emerson's 
question,  "  Is  it  not  worth  the  ambition 


EMERSON  99 

of  every  generous  youth  to  train  and  arm 
his  mind  with  all  the  resources  of  knowl 
edge,  of  method,  of  grace,  and  of  character 
to  serve  such  a  constituency  ?  "  But  then 
Emerson's  definition  of  eloquence  is  sim 
ple,  and  foretells  the  practice  of  to-day 
rather  than  describes  the  practice  of 
Webster,  Everett,  Choate,  and  Winthrop, 
his  contemporaries :  "  Know  your  fact ; 
hug  your  fact.  For  the  essential  thing  is 
heat,  and  heat  comes  of  sincerity.  .  .  . 
Eloquence  is  the  power  to  translate  a 
truth  into  language  perfectly  intelligible 
to  the  person  to  whom  you  speak." 

I  turn  next  to  some  examples  of  Emer 
son's  anticipation  of  social  conditions, 
visible  to  him  as  seer  in  his  own  day,  and 
since  become  plain  to  the  sight  of  the 
ordinary  millions.  When  he  accumulated 
in  his  journals  the  original  materials  of  his 


100   FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

essay  on  Worship,  there  were  no  large 
cities  in  the  United  States  in  the  present 
sense  of  that  term.  The  great  experiment 
of  democracy  was  not  far  advanced,  and 
had  not  developed  many  of  its  sins  and 
dangers ;  yet  how  justly  he  presented 
them  in  the  following  description  :  "  In 
our  large  cities,  the  population  is  godless, 
materialized,  —  no  bond,  no  fellow-feeling, 
no  enthusiasm.  These  are  not  men,  but 
hungers,  thirsts,  fevers,  and  appetites 
walking.  How  is  it  people  manage  to 
live  on,  so  aimless  as  they  are  ?  .  .  .  There 
is  faith  in  chemistry,  in  meat  and  wine,  in 
wealth,  in  machinery,  in  the  steam-engine, 
galvanic  battery,  turbine  wheels,  sewing- 
machines,  and  in  public  opinion,  but  not 
in  divine  causes." 

In  Emerson's  day,  luxury  in  the  pres 
ent  sense  had  hardly  been  developed  in 
our  country ;  but  he  foresaw  its  coming, 


EMERSON  101 

and  its  insidious  destructiveness.  "  We 
spend  our  incomes  for  paint  and  paper, 
for  a  hundred  trifles,  I  know  not  what, 
and  not  for  the  things  of  a  man.  Our 
expense  is  almost  all  for  conformity.  It 
is  for  cake  that  we  run  in  debt ;  it  is  not 
the  intellect,  not  the  heart,  not  beauty, 
not  worship,  that  costs  us  so  much.  Why 
needs  any  man  be  rich  ?  Why  must  he 
have  horses,  fine  garments,  handsome 
apartments,  access  to  public  houses  and 
places  of  amusement  ?  Only  for  want  of 
thought.  .  .  .  We  are  first  thoughtless, 
and  then  find  that  we  are  moneyless. 
We  are  first  sensual  and  then  must  be 
rich."  He  foresaw  the  young  man's  state 
of  mind  to-day  about  marriage  —  I  must 
have  money  before  I  can  marry;  and 
deals  with  it  thus :  "  Give  us  wealth  and 
the  home  shall  exist.  But  that  is  a  very 
imperfect  and  inglorious  solution  of  the 


102    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

problem,  and  therefore  no  solution.  Give 
us  wealth  !  You  ask'too  much.  Few  have 
wealth  ;  but  all  must  have  a  home.  Men 
are  not  born  rich  ;  in  getting  wealth  the 
man  is  generally  sacrificed,  and  often  is 
sacrificed  without  acquiring  wealth  at  last." 
We  have  come  to  understand  by  ex 
perience  that  the  opinion  of  masses  of 
men  is  a  formidable  power  which  can  be 
made  safe  and  useful.  In  earlier  days 
this  massed  opinion  was  either  despised  or 
dreaded  ;  and  it  is  dreadful,  if  either  con 
fined  or  misdirected.  Emerson  compares 
it  to  steam.  Studied,  economized,  and 
directed,  steam  has  become  the  power  by 
which  all  great  labors  are  done.  Like 
steam  is  the  opinion  of  political  masses  ! 
If  crushed  by  castles,  armies,  and  police, 
dangerously  explosive  ;  but  if  furnished 
with  schools  and  the  ballot,  developing 
"the  most  harmless  and  energetic  form 


EMERSON  103 

of  a  state."  His  eyes  were  wide  open  to 
some  of  the  evil  intellectual  effects  of 
democracy.  The  individual  is  too  apt  to 
wear  the  time-worn  yoke  of  the  multi 
tude's  opinions.  No  multiplying  of  con 
temptible  units  can  produce  an  admirable 
mass.  "  If  I  see  nothing  to  admire  in  a 
unit,  shall  I  admire  a  million  units  ? " 
The  habit  of  submitting  to  majority  rule 
cultivates  individual  subserviency.  He 
pointed  out  two  generations  ago  that  the 
action  of  violent  political  parties  in  a 
democracy  might  provide  for  the  individ 
ual  citizen  a  systematic  training  in  moral 
cowardice. 

It  is  interesting,  at  the  stage  of  indus 
trial  warfare  which  the  world  has  now 
reached,  to  observe  how  Emerson,  sixty 
years  ago,  discerned  clearly  the  absurdity 
of  paying  all  sorts  of  service  at  one  rate, 
now  a  favorite  notion  with  some  labor 


104    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

unions.  He  points  out  that  even  when 
all  labor  is  temporarily  paid  at  one  rate, 
differences  in  possessions  will  instantly 
arise :  "  In  one  hand  the  dime  became  an 
eagle  as  it  fell,  and  in  another  hand  a  cop 
per  cent.  For  the  whole  value  of  the 
dime  is  in  knowing  what  to  do  with  it." 
Emerson  was  never  deceived  by  a  specious 
philanthropy,  or  by  claims  of  equality 
which  find  no  support  in  the  nature  of 
things.  He  was  a  true  democrat,  but 
still  could  say :  "  I  think  I  see  place  and 
duties  for  a  nobleman  in  every  society  ; 
but  it  is  not  to  drink  wine  and  ride  in  a 
fine  coach,  but  to  guide  and  adorn  life  for 
the  multitude  by  forethought,  by  elegant 
studies,  by  perseverance,  self-devotion, 
and  the  remembrance  of  the  humble  old 
friend,  —  by  making  his  life  secretly  beau 
tiful."  How  fine  a  picture  of  the  demo 
cratic  nobility  is  that  1 


EMERSON  105 

In  his  lecture  on  Man  the  Reformer, 
which  was  read  before  the  Mechanics* 
Apprentices'  Association  in  Boston  in 
January,  1841,  Emerson  described  in  the 
clearest  manner  the  approaching  strife 
between  laborers  and  employers,  between 
poor  and  rich,  and  pointed  out  the  cause 
of  this  strife  in  the  selfishness,  unkindness, 
and  mutual  distrust  which  ran  through 
the  community.  He  also  described,  with 
perfect  precision,  the  only  ultimate  remedy, 
—  namely,  the  sentiment  of  love.  "  Love 
would  put  a  new  face  on  this  weary  old 
world  in  which  we  dwell  as  pagans  and 
enemies  too  long.  .  .  .  The  virtue  of  this 
principle  in  human  society  in  application 
to  great  interests  is  obsolete  and  forgotten. 
But  one  day  all  men  will  be  lovers ;  and 
every  calamity  will  be  dissolved  in  the 
universal  sunshine."  It  is  more  than  sixty 
years  since  those  words  were  uttered,  and 


106    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

in  those  years  society  has  had  large  ex 
perience  of  industrial  and  social  strife,  of 
its  causes  and  consequences,  and  of  many 
attempts  to  remedy  or  soften  it ;  but  all 
this  experience  only  goes  to  show  that 
there  is  but  one  remedy  for  these  ills.  It 
is  to  be  found  in  kindness,  good  fellow 
ship,  and  the  affections.  In  Emerson's 
words,  "  We  must  be  lovers,  and  at  once 
the  impossible  becomes  possible."  The 
world  will  wait  long  for  this  remedy,  but 
there  is  no  other. 

Like  every  real  seer  and  prophet  whose 
testimony  is  recorded,  Emerson  had  in 
tense  sympathy  with  the  poor,  laborious, 
dumb  masses  of  mankind,  and  being  a 
wide  reader  in  history  and  biography, 
he  early  arrived  at  the  conviction  that 
history  needed  to  be  written  in  a  new 
manner.  It  was  long  before  Green's 
History  of  the  English  People  that  Em- 


EMERSON  107 

erson  wrote  :  "  Hence  it  happens  that  the 
whole  interest  of  history  lies  in  the  for 
tunes  of  the  poor."  In  recent  years  this 
view  of  history  has  come  to  prevail,  and 
we  are  given  the  stories  of  institutions, 
industries,  commerce,  crafts,  arts,  and 
beliefs,  instead  of  the  stories  of  dynasties 
and  wars.  For  Emerson  it  is  always 
feats  of  liberty  and  wit  which  make 
epochs  of  history.  Commerce  is  civil 
izing  because  "the  power  which  the  sea 
requires  in  the  sailor  makes  a  man  of  him 
very  fast."  The  invention  of  a  house, 
safe  against  wild  animals,  frost,  and  heat, 
gives  play  to  the  finer  faculties,  and  in 
troduces  art,  manners,  and  social  de 
lights.  The  discovery  of  the  post  office 
is  a  fine  metre  of  civilization.  The  sea 
going  steamer  marks  an  epoch ;  the  sub 
jection  of  electricity  to  take  messages  and 
turn  wheels  marks  another.  But,  after 


108    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

all,  the  vital  stages  of  human  progress 
are  marked  by  steps  toward  personal,  in 
dividual  freedom.  The  love  of  liberty 
was  Emerson's  fundamental  passion :  — 

"  For  He  that  ruleth  high  and  wise, 

Nor  pauseth  in  His  plan, 
Will  take  the  sun  out  of  the  skies 
Ere  freedom  out  of  man." 

The  new  National  League  of  Indepen 
dent  Workmen  of  America  has  very 
appropriately  taken  its  motto  from 
Emerson :  — 

"  For  what  avail  the  plough  or  sail 
Or  land  or  life,  if  freedom  fail  ?  " 

The  sympathetic  reader  of  Emerson 
comes  often  upon  passages  written  long 
ago  which  are  positively  startling  in  their 
anticipation  of  sentiments  common  to 
day  and  apparently  awakened  by  very 
recent  events.  One  would  suppose  that 
the  following  passage  was  written  yes- 


EMERSON  109 

terday.  It  was  written  fifty-six  years 
ago.  "  And  so,  gentlemen,  I  feel  in  re 
gard  to  this  aged  England,  with  the  pos 
sessions,  honors,  and  trophies,  and  also 
with  the  infirmities  of  a  thousand  years 
gathering  around  her,  irretrievably  com 
mitted  as  she  now  is  to  many  old  cus 
toms  which  cannot  be  suddenly  changed  ; 
pressed  upon  by  the  transitions  of  trade, 
and  new  and  all  incalculable  modes,  fab 
rics,  arts,  machines,  and  competing  pop 
ulations,  —  I  see  her  not  dispirited,  not 
weak,  but  well  remembering  that  she  has 
seen  dark  days  before; — indeed  with  a 
kind  of  instinct  that  she  sees  a  little  bet 
ter  in  a  cloudy  day,  and  that  in  storm  of 
battle  and  calamity,  she  has  a  secret  vigor 
and  a  pulse  like  a  cannon." 

Before  the  Civil  War  the  Jew  had  no 
such  place  in  society  as  he  holds  to-day. 
He  was  by  no  means  so  familiar  to  Amer- 


110    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

icans  as  he  is  now.  Emerson  speaks 
twice  of  the  Jew  in  his  essay  on  Fate,  in 
terms  precisely  similar  to  those  we  com 
monly  hear  to-day :  "  We  see  how  much 
will  has  been  expended  to  extinguish  the 
Jew,  in  vain.  .  .  .  The  sufferance  which 
is  the  badge  of  the  Jew  has  made  him 
in  these  days  the  ruler  of  the  rulers 
of  the  earth."  Those  keen  observations 
were  made  certainly  more  than  forty 
years  ago,  and  probably  more  than  fifty. 

Landscape  architecture  is  not  yet  an 
established  profession  among  us,  in  spite 
of  the  achievements  of  Downing,  Cleve 
land,  and  Olmsted  and  their  disciples ; 
yet  much  has  been  accomplished  within 
the  last  twenty-five  years  to  realize  the 
predictions  on  this  subject  made  by  Em 
erson  in  his  lecture  on  The  Young  Amer 
ican.  He  pointed  out  in  that  lecture  that 
the  beautiful  gardens  of  Europe  are  un- 


EMERSON  111 

known  among  us,  but  might  be  easily 
imitated  here,  and  said  that  the  land 
scape  art  "is  the  Fine  Art  which  is  left 
for  us.  ...  The  whole  force  of  all  arts 
goes  to  facilitate  the  decoration  of  lands 
and  dwellings.  ...  1  look  on  such  im 
provement  as  directly  tending  to  endear 
the  land  to  the  inhabitant."  The  follow 
ing  sentence  might  have  been  written 
yesterday,  so  consistent  is  it  with  the 
thought  of  to-day :  "  Whatever  events 
in  progress  shall  go  to  disgust  men  with 
cities,  and  infuse  into  them  the  passion 
for  country  life  and  country  pleasures, 
will  render  a  service  to  the  whole  face 
of  this  continent,  and  will  further  the 
most  poetic  of  all  the  occupations  of  real 
life,  the  bringing  out  by  art  the  native 
but  hidden  graces  of  the  landscape."  In 
regard  to  books,  pictures,  statues,  collec 
tions  in  natural  history,  and  all  such  re- 


112    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

fining  objects  of  nature  and  art,  which 
heretofore  only  the  opulent  could  enjoy, 
Emerson  pointed  out  that  in  America  the 
public  should  provide  these  means  of 
culture  and  inspiration  for  every  citizen. 
He  thus  anticipated  the  present  owner 
ship  by  cities,  or  by  endowed  trustees, 
of  parks,  gardens,  and  museums  of  art 
or  science,  as  well  as  of  baths  and  orches 
tras.  Of  music  in  particular  he  said :  "I 
think  sometimes  could  I  only  have  music 
on  my  own  terms ;  could  I  ...  know 
where  I  could  go  whenever  I  wished  the 
ablution  and  inundation  of  musical  weaves, 
—  that  were  a  bath  and  a  medicine."  It 
has  been  a  long  road  from  that  sentence, 
written  probably  in  the  forties,  to  the 
Symphony  Orchestra  in  this  Hall,  and  to 
the  new  singing  classes  on  the  East  Side 
of  New  York  City. 

For  those  of  us  who  have  attended  to 


EMERSON  113 

the  outburst  of  novels  and  treatises  on 
humble  or  squalid  life,  to  the  copious 
discussions  on  child-study,  to  the  masses 
of  slum  literature,  and  to  the  numerous 
writings  on  home  economics,  how  true 
to-day  seems  the  following  sentence  writ 
ten  in  1837  :  "The  literature  of  the  poor, 
the  feelings  of  the  child,  the  philosophy 
of  the  street,  the  meaning  of  household 
life  are  the  topics  of  the  time." 

I  pass  now  to  the  last  of  the  three 
topics  which  time  permits  me  to  discuss, 
—  Emerson's  religion.  In  no  field  of 
thought  was  Emerson  more  prophetic, 
more  truly  a  prophet  of  coming  states 
of  human  opinion,  than  in  religion.  In 
the  first  place,  he  taught  that  religion 
is  absolutely  natural,  —  not  supernatural, 
but  natural:  — 

"  Out  from  the  heart  of  Nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old." 

8 


114    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

He  believed  that  revelation  is  natural  and 
continuous,  and  that  in  all  ages  prophets 
are  born.  Those  souls  out  of  time  pro 
claim  truth,  which  may  be  momentarily 
received  with  reverence,  but  is  neverthe 
less  quickly  dragged  down  into  some 
savage  interpretation  which  by  and  by 
a  new  prophet  will  purge  away.  He  be 
lieved  that  man  is  guided  by  the  same 
power  that  guides  beast  and  flower. 
"  The  selfsame  power  that  brought  me 
here  brought  you,"  he  says  to  beautiful 
Rhodora.  For  him  worship  is  the  atti 
tude  of  those  "who  see  that  against  all 
appearances  the  nature  of  things  works 
for  truth  and  right  forever."  He  saw 
good  not  only  in  what  we  call  beauty, 
grace,  and  light,  but  in  what  we  call  foul 
and  ugly.  For  him  a  sky-born  music 
sounds  "from  all  that's  fair;  from  all 
that 's  foul :  "  — 


EMERSON  115 

"  'T  is  not  in  the  high  stars  alone, 

Nor  in  the  cups  of  budding  flowers, 
Nor  in  the  redbreast's  mellow  tone, 

Nor  in  the  bow  that  smiles  in  showers, 
But  in  the  mud  and  scum  of  things 
There  alway,  alway  something  sings." 

The  universe  was  ever  new  and  fresh  in 
his  eyes,  not  spent,  or  fallen,  or  degraded, 
but  eternally  tending  upward  :  — 

"  No  ray  is  dimmed,  no  atom  worn, 
My  oldest  force  is  good  as  new, 
And  the  fresh  rose  on  yonder  thorn 

Gives  back  the  bending  heavens  in  dew." 

When  we  come  to  his  interpretation  of 
historical  Christianity,  we  find  that  in  his 
view  the  life  and  works  of  Jesus  fell  en 
tirely  within  the  field  of  human  experi 
ence.  He  sees  in  the  deification  of  Jesus 
an  evidence  of  lack  of  faith  in  the  infini 
tude  of  the  individual  human  soul.  He 
sees  in  every  gleam  of  human  virtue  not 
only  the  presence  of  God,  but  some  atom 


116    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

of  His  nature.  As  a  preacher  he  had  no 
tone  of  authority.  A  true  non-conformist 
himself,  he  had  no  desire  to  impose  his 
views  on  anybody.  •  Religious  truth,  like 
all  other  truth,  was  to  his  thought  an  un 
rolling  picture,  not  a  deposit  made  once 
for  all  in  some  sacred  vessel.  When 
people  who  were  sure  they  had  drained 
that  vessel,  and  assimilated  its  contents, 
attacked  him,  he  was  irresponsive  or  im 
passive,  and  yielded  to  them  no  juicy 
thought ;  so  they  pronounced  him  dry  or 
empty.  Yet  all  of  Emerson's  religious 
teaching  led  straight  to  God,  —  not  to 
a  withdrawn  creator,  or  anthropomor 
phic  judge  or  king,  but  to  the  all-inform 
ing,  all-sustaining  soul  of  the  universe. 

It  was  a  prophetic  quality  of  Emerson's 
religious  teaching  that  he  sought  to  ob 
literate  the  distinction  between  secular 
and  sacred.  For  him  all  things  were 


EMERSON  117 

sacred,  just  as  the  universe  was  religious. 
We  see  an  interesting  fruition  of  Emer 
son's  sowing  in  the  nature  of  the  means 
of  influence,  which  organized  churches 
and  devout  people  have,  in  these  later 
days,  been  compelled  to  resort  to.  Thus 
the  Catholic  Church  keeps  its  hold  on  its 
natural  constituency  quite  as  much  by 
schools,  gymnasiums,  hospitals,  entertain 
ments,  and  social  parades  as  it  does  by 
its  rites  and  sacraments.  The  Protestant 
Churches  maintain  in  city  slums  "  settle 
ments,"  which  use  the  secular  rather  than 
the  so-called  sacred  methods.  The  fight 
against  drunkenness,  and  the  sexual  vice 
and  crimes  of  violence  which  follow  in  its 
train,  is  most  successfully  maintained  by 
eliminating  its  physical  causes  and  pro 
viding  mechanical  and  social  protections. 
For  Emerson  inspiration  meant  not  the 
rare  conveyance  of  supernatural  power  to 


118  FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

an  individual,  but  the  constant  incoming 
into  each  man  of  the  "divine  soul  which 
also  inspires  all  men.1'  He  believed  in  the 
worth  of  the  present  hour  :  — 

"  Future  or  Past  no  richer  secret  folds, 
O  friendless  Present !  than  thy  bosom  holds." 

He  believed  that  the  spiritual  force  of 
human  character  imaged  the  divine:  — 

"The  sun  set,  but  set  not  his  hope  : 
Stars  rose ;  his  faith  was  earlier  up : 
Fixed  on  the  enormous  galaxy, 
Deeper  and  older  seemed  his  eye." 

Yet  man  is  not  an  order  of  nature,  but 
a  stupendous  antagonism,  because  he 
chooses  and  acts  in  his  soul.  "  So  far  as 
a  man  thinks,  he  is  free."  It  is  interest 
ing  to-day,  after  all  the  long  discussion  of 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  to  see  how 
the  much  earlier  conceptions  of  Emer 
son  match  the  thoughts  of  the  latest 


EMERSON  119 

exponents   of  the   philosophic  results  of 
evolution. 

The  present  generation  of  scholars  and 
ministers  has  been  passing  through  an 
important  crisis  in  regard  to  the  sacred 
books  of  Judaism  and  Christianity.  All 
the  features  of  the  contest  over  "  the 
higher  criticism  "  are  foretold  by  Emer 
son  in  "  The  American  Scholar."  "  The 
poet  chanting  was  felt  to  be  a  divine  man  ; 
henceforth  the  chant  is  divine  also.  The 
writer  was  a  just  and  wise  spirit ;  hence 
forward  it  is  settled  the  book  is  perfect. 
Colleges  are  built  on  it ;  books  are  written 
on  it.  ...  Instantly  the  book  becomes 
noxious ;  the  guide  is  a  tyrant."  This  is 
exactly  what  has  happened  to  Protestant 
ism,  which  substituted  for  infallible  Pope 
and  Church  an  infallible  Book  ;  and  this 
is  precisely  the  evil  from  which  modern 
scholarship  is  delivering  the  world. 


120  FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

In  religion  Emerson  was  only  a  nine 
teenth-century  non-conformist  instead  of 
a  fifteenth  or  seventeenth  century  one. 
It  was  a  fundamental  article  in  his  creed 
that,  although  conformity  is  the  virtue  in 
most  request,  "Whoso  would  be  a  man 
must  be  a  non-conformist."  In  the  midst 
of  increasing  luxury,  and  of  that  easy 
going,  unbelieving  conformity  which  is 
itself  a  form  of  luxury,  Boston,  the 
birthplace  of  Emerson,  may  well  remem 
ber  with  honor  the  generations  of  non 
conformists  who  made  her,  and  created 
the  intellectual  and  moral  climate  in 
which  Emerson  grew  up.  Inevitably,  to 
conformists  and  to  persons  who  still  accept 
doctrines  and  opinions  which  he  rejected, 
he  seems  presumptuous  and  consequential. 
In  recent  days  we  have  even  seen  the  word 
"  insolent "  applied  to  this  quietest  and 
most  retiring  of  seers.  But  have  not  all 


EMERSON  121 

prophets  and  ethical  teachers  had  some 
thing  of  this  aspect  to  their  conservative 
contemporaries  ?  We  hardly  expect  the 
messages  of  prophets  to  be  welcome  ;  they 
imply  too  much  dissatisfaction  with  the 
present. 

The  essence  of  Emerson's  teaching  con 
cerning  man's  nature  is  compressed  into 
the  famous  verse  :  — 

"  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 
The  youth  replies,  I  can." 

The  cynic  or  the  fall-of-man  theologian 
replies  —  Grandeur  indeed,  say  rather 
squalor  and  shame.  To  this  ancient  pes 
simism  Emerson  makes  answer  with  a 
hard  question  —  "  We  grant  that  human 
life  is  mean,  but  how  did  we  find  out  that 
it  was  mean  ? "  To  this  question  no 
straight  answer  has  been  found,  the  com- 


122   FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

mon  answer  running  in  a  circle.  It  is 
hard  indeed  to  conceive  of  a  measure 
which  will  measure  depths  but  not  heights  ; 
and  besides,  every  measure  implies  a 
standard. 

I  have  endeavored  to  set  before  you 
some  of  the  practical  results  of  Emerson's 
visions  and  intuitions,  because,  though 
quite  unfit  to  expound  his  philosophical 
views,  I  am  capable  of  appreciating  some 
of  the  many  instances  in  which  his  words 
have  come  true  in  the  practical  experience 
of  my  own  generation.  My  own  work  has 
been  a  contribution  to  the  prosaic,  concrete 
work  of  building,  brick  by  brick,  the  new 
walls  of  old  American  institutions  of  edu 
cation.  As  a  young  man  I  found  the 
writings  of  Emerson  unattractive,  and  not 
seldom  unintelligible.  I  was  concerned 
with  physical  science,  and  with  routine 


EMERSON  123 

teaching  and  discipline ;  and  Emerson's 
thinking  seemed  to  me  speculative  and 
visionary.  In  regard  to  religious  belief, 
I  was  brought  up  in  the  old-fashioned 
Unitarian  conservatism  of  Boston,  which 
was  rudely  shocked  by  Emerson's  excur 
sions  beyond  its  well-fenced  precincts.  But 
when  I  had  got  at  what  proved  to  be  my--,, 
lifework  for  education,  I  discovered  in 
Emerson's  poems  and  essays  all  the  funda-  / 
mental  motives  and  principles  of  my  own 
hourly  struggle  against  educational  routine 
and  tradition,  and  against  the  prevailing 
notions  of  discipline  for  the  young;  so 
when  I  was  asked  to  speak  to  you  to-night 
about  him,  although  I  realized  my  unfit- 
ness  in  many  respects  for  such  a  function, 
I  could  not  refuse  the  opportunity  to  point 
out  how  many  of  the  sober,  practical  un 
dertakings  of  to-day  had  been  anticipated 
in  all  their  principles  by  this  solitary, 


124    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

shrewd,  independent  thinker,  who,  in 
an  inconsecutive  and  almost  ejaculatory 
way,  wrought  out  many  sentences  and 
verses  which  will  travel  far  down  the 
generations. 

I  was  also  interested  in  studying  in  this 
example  the  quality  of  prophets  in  general. 
We  know  a  good  deal  about  the  intellec 
tual  ancestors  and  inspirers  of  Emerson ; 
and  we  are  sure  that  he  drank  deep  at 
many  springs  of  idealism  and  poetry. 
Plato,  Confucius,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton 
were  of  his  teachers  ;  Oken,  Lamarck,  and 
Lyell  lent  him  their  scientific  theories; 
and  Channing  stirred  the  residuum  which 
came  down  to  him  through  his  forbears 
from  Luther,  Calvin,  and  Edwards.  All 
these  materials  he  transmuted  and  mould 
ed  into  lessons  which  have  his  own  indi 
vidual  quality  and  bear  his  stamp.  The 
precise  limits  of  his  individuality  are  inde- 


EMERSON  125 

terminable,  and  inquiry  into  them  would 
be  unprofitable.  In  all  probability  the 
case  would  prove  to  be  much  the  same 
with  most  of  the  men  that  the  world 
has  named  prophets,  if  we  knew  as  much 
of  their  mental  history  as  we  know  of 
Emerson's.  With  regard  to  the  Semitic 
prophets  and  seers,  it  is  reasonable  to 
expect  that  as  Semitic  exploration  and 
discovery  advance,  the  world  will  learn 
much  about  the  historical  and  poetical 
sources  of  their  inspiration.  Then  the 
Jewish  and  Christian  peoples  may  come 
nearer  than  they  do  now  to  Emerson's 
conceptions  of  inspiration  and  worship, 
of  the  naturalness  of  revelation  and  re 
ligion,  and  of  the  infinite  capacities  of 
man.  Meantime,  it  is  an  indisputable 
fact  that  Emerson's  thought  has  proved 
to  be  consonant  with  the  most  progres 
sive  and  fruitful  thinking  and  acting  of 


126    FOUR  AMERICAN  LEADERS 

two  generations  since  his  working  time. 
This  fact,  and  the  sweetness,  fragrance, 
and  loftiness  of  his  spirit,  prophesy  for 
him  an  enduring  power  in  the  hearts  and 
lives  of  spiritually-minded  men. 


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